A waiting period is often used as a form of deductible or excess. In the Coalition policy, the waiting period is the period of time that must pass following a security failure or systems failure before you will receive coverage for business interruption losses and extra expenses. In other words, the partial or complete failure of your computer systems resulting from a security failure or systems failure must last for at least the duration of the waiting period (8 hours by default) in order to receive coverage.
Importantly, in the Coalition policy, once the waiting period has been met, business interruption losses are covered starting from the date and time that the partial or complete interruption of your computer systems first occurred. This includes losses that occurred during the waiting period. Do note that many cyber insurance policies only cover business interruption losses occurring after the waiting period (in other words, you're on the hook for losses that occur during the waiting period).
You might be asking yourself, if Coalition covers the losses that occur during the waiting period, why even have a waiting period at all? Insurance in general, and our insurance specifically, is meant to cover major events and not day-to-day short network interruptions or security failures. Different businesses may purchase a longer or shorter waiting period based on their appetite for risk and how quickly they believe their IT disaster recovery plans can respond.
Coalition offers waiting periods as low as 1 hour. To learn more, click here.