Why is contingent business interruption insurance difficult to secure?
Contingent business interruption (CBI) insurance can help protect your business when a supplier disruption affects operations, production, or delivery. But insurers need clear evidence of supplier dependencies, bottlenecks, concentration risk, and financial exposure before they can assess risk confidently.
Marsh data shows 65% of companies have at least one single point of failure hidden in their upstream supply chain. And in Asia, contingent business interruption remains a top-three risk, particularly for manufacturing and technology sectors.
When supplier visibility is limited, insurers may apply greater underwriting scrutiny. That can make adequate CBI coverage harder to secure and may affect the limits, terms and pricing.
What do insurers need to assess contingent business interruption exposure?
To support CBI underwriting, insurers typically want answers to questions such as:
- Which suppliers are critical to your business operations?
- Where are your tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3 supplier dependencies?
- Are there concentration risks in specific geographies, facilities, routes, or vendors?
- What is the financial impact if a key supplier is disrupted?
- How quickly could disruption cascade through your operations?
What are the three biggest challenges in obtaining contingent business interruption coverage?
1. Limited visibility into supplier exposure
Many organisations have a good view of direct suppliers but limited visibility beyond tier 1. In addition, incomplete location data makes it harder to assess risk and build an accurate risk profile. That makes it difficult to assess hidden dependencies and single points of failure for insurers to understand aggregate exposure across the supplier network.
2. Incomplete risk exposure quantification
Traditional assessments may not capture how disruption at one supplier can escalate into operational downtime, lost revenue or delayed delivery across the wider business.
3. Low underwriting confidence
When supplier data is incomplete or inconsistent, underwriters may lack the evidence they need to assess risk and place cover on competitive terms.
How does Sentrisk help improve CBI underwriting confidence?
Sentrisk helps your organisation strengthen CBI risk assessment and underwriting readiness in four key ways:
1. Identify and quantify real-time supply chain exposure
Sentrisk rapidly maps multi-tier supply chains to uncover hidden supplier dependencies and concentration risks. It then analyses exposures using proprietary methodologies that integrate geopolitical, natural hazard, reputational, structural and tariff risks across your supply chain network.
2. Provide data-driven evidence for underwriters
Sentrisk generates detailed reports with AI-verified supplier data to support accurate and efficient underwriting submissions. This helps insurers better understand where your supplier dependencies and concentration risks exist and how they may affect your business interruption exposure.
3. Enable real-time monitoring and early-warning signals
Sentrisk provides real-time monitoring and early-warning signals to help your organisation identify emerging risks in a timely manner, prioritise mitigation and respond before disruption escalates.
4. Strengthen resilience with Marsh risk consulting expertise
Sentrisk insights are enhanced by Marsh Risk Consulting, helping your organisation translate visibility into long-term risk management strategies through scenario planning exercises, stress-testing your incident response plans, mitigation strategies and supplier diversification advice.
This makes Sentrisk especially useful for your organisation seeking stronger contingent business interruption coverage, improved renewal outcomes, and more confident risk transfer decisions.
How did Sentrisk strengthen CBI underwriting readiness for an electronics manufacturer?
Following a previous contingent business interruption (CBI) claim, an electronics manufacturer faced deeper scrutiny during insurance renewal. The organisation needed to demonstrate stronger visibility into its supply chain exposures and risk management controls.
Using Sentrisk, Marsh provided an end-to-end view of the manufacturer’s supplier network, identifying more than 20,000 tier 2 and tier 3 suppliers from the client’s direct supplier base.
The assessment uncovered key concentration risks, supplier bottlenecks, and exposures to natural hazards and geopolitical risks across the supply chain. These insights helped the organisation improve its supply chain risk management, strengthen visibility into critical supplier dependencies, and support adequate CBI coverage.
Why use Marsh Sentrisk for your contingent business interruption renewal?
Sentrisk has mapped more than 2 million supplier locations for over 750 clients across 15 industry sectors, helping organisations gain deeper visibility into supplier dependencies, concentration risks, and business interruption exposures.