Two years ago we published our first post on insurance, when DFNS secured cyber crime cover from Munich Re and professional liability and cyber cover from Beazley. We wrote it because the industry had a habit of advertising “industry-leading” insurance without saying who was covered, for what, or against which exclusions. We promised to keep publishing the details as they changed. They have changed, so here is the update.
On 1 October 2026, DFNS moved its insurance program to the Lloyd’s market. Both of our covers are now placed with Lloyd’s syndicates, Mosaic Syndicate 1609 and Markel Syndicate 3000, arranged through Native, with limits that are higher and better structured than before. The certificate is available to clients on request.
What the cover is
The program has two parts, with separate limits that do not erode each other.
- Technology errors and omissions, and cyber. EUR 10,000,000 (about USD 11,150,000) for any one claim or insured event and in the aggregate, underwritten 100 percent by Mosaic Syndicate 1609 at Lloyd’s. This is the cover that responds to our professional and technology liability, to cyber incidents and to data and network events.
- Crime. EUR 10,000,000 (about USD 11,150,000) for any one insured event and in the aggregate, led by Mosaic Syndicate 1609 at Lloyd’s with 50% and followed by Markel Syndicate 3000 at Lloyd’s with 50%. This limit is distinct from the technology and cyber limit. A crime loss does not reduce what is available for a liability claim, and the reverse is true as well.
Both covers run from 1 October 2026 to 1 October 2027, apply worldwide, and insure DFNS and its subsidiaries. The policies are written in euros. USD amounts in this post are indicative, converted at the European Central Bank reference rate of 27 October 2026 (EUR 1 = USD 1.1150).
What has gotten better
The simplest way to see the change is side by side.
| October 2024 | October 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Crime cover | Munich Re, through Great Lakes Insurance SE, EUR 10 million aggregate, EUR 500,000 deductible per event | Lloyd’s, Mosaic Syndicate 1609 leading and Markel Syndicate 3000 following, EUR 10 million (about USD 11.15 million) any one event and in the aggregate |
| Professional liability and cyber | Beazley, EUR 2.5 million per claim and in the aggregate | Lloyd’s, Mosaic Syndicate 1609, EUR 10 million (about USD 11.15 million) any one claim and in the aggregate |
| Structure | Two carriers, two policies | One Lloyd’s program, two separate limits that do not erode each other |
| Total capacity | EUR 12.5 million | EUR 20 million (about USD 22.3 million) |
| Territory | As per each policy | Worldwide, stated on the certificate |
| Insured | DFNS | DFNS SAS and its subsidiaries |
Three changes matter most:
- The liability and cyber limit has quadrupled, from EUR 2.5 million to EUR 10 million (about USD 11.15 million). This is the cover that matters to a client who suffers a loss because of an error in our technology or our services rather than a theft, and it is now on the same scale as the crime cover.
- The crime cover moved to a lead and follow structure at Lloyd’s. Two syndicates now share the risk, with Mosaic leading. For a client, that means the capacity behind a crime claim rests on two balance sheets rather than one, within a market built for exactly this kind of specialty risk.
- The program is now written as one coordinated placement with distinct limits. In 2024, the crime policy sat as excess cover over other insurance, and the two policies came from different carriers with different wordings. Today the covers are placed together, the limits are separate by design, and the total capacity has grown from EUR 12.5 million to EUR 20 million (about USD 22.3 million).
What insurance does and does not do
We said this in 2024 and repeated it in our analysis of the Bitget hack this month. Insurance is a liability instrument, not a recovery plan. Against a loss of the size the largest exchange hacks produce, no program of this kind makes anyone whole. What it does is make DFNS financially accountable for the risks it is responsible for, with capacity behind that accountability that an auditor can verify.
The same honesty applies to exclusions. Every policy of this kind carries them, and ours are no different in kind from those we listed in 2024. Losses from war, terrorism or state action, from failures of a blockchain network itself, from events outside our platform such as the use of an exported key or recovery phrase elsewhere, and from a client’s own compromised credentials with no breach on our side, fall outside the insuring clauses. We will walk any client through the wording. The point of publishing the limits is not to suggest the cover is unlimited. It is to let you check our claims against the document.
What is coming next
Additional coverage is being arranged and will be announced when it is bound. The larger piece of work is to build a meaningful specie insurance policy applied to multi-party computation (MPC). Specie cover traditionally protects physical valuables and, in digital assets, keys held in cold storage. We are working with leading underwriters on a specie program adapted to MPC key infrastructure, at a limit we expect to be among the highest available for this kind of cover. It is the natural complement to the crime and liability covers above, and we will publish the details, limits and exclusions included, when it is in place.
As before, the full policy wording and the certificate of insurance are available to clients under NDA. Write to sales@dfns.co and we will set up a call to walk your risk and compliance teams through the covers, what they respond to, and where they stop.
Get started
- Read our first insurance post: dfns.co/article/insurance-beazley-munichre
- Learn more about onchain core banking: dfns.co
- Request the certificate of insurance: sales@dfns.co
