In January 2016, a new crisis insurance product called Crisis Tether launched for small and mid-size tourism operators, providing emergency communications support for businesses too small to retain dedicated crisis PR counsel. The product was framed as a category innovation — bringing reputation protection economics within reach of operators below the enterprise scale.
The broader crisis-insurance category has expanded substantially across the years since, and the underlying reputational risk environment continues to evolve. This is the working reference on what crisis insurance is, what it covers, and how the category has developed.
What crisis insurance is
Crisis insurance refers to insurance and adjacent specialty products covering the costs of crisis events, including crisis management consulting, communications response, regulatory defense, and adjacent categories.
Traditional enterprise crisis insurance has been written by AIG, Chubb, Zurich, Beazley, and adjacent specialty insurers for Fortune 1000 companies. The policies cover crisis management costs, business interruption from reputational events, regulatory defense expense, and similar categories. The premiums have historically been enterprise-priced, leaving small and mid-size operators largely outside the addressable market.
Mid-market and SMB products have emerged through specialty operators to address that gap. Crisis Tether was one of several emerging mid-market crisis-insurance experiments across the 2014–2017 period.
What Crisis Tether did
The product, launched by Checkmate Public Affairs under Jeff Chatterton, packaged crisis communications, regulatory liaison, and media response support inside a subscription priced for sub-500-employee tourism operators. The architecture used the broader insurance model — band small operators into a larger pool, spread risk across the base, keep premiums accessible.
The category logic was sound. Small operators face real reputation risks but cannot economically justify enterprise-priced crisis PR retainers. A subscription product that delivers enterprise-grade crisis response at SMB-scale pricing addresses a meaningful gap in the market.
What crisis insurance covers
Typical crisis insurance policies cover some combination of:
Crisis management consulting fees. The cost of retaining outside crisis communications counsel during an event.
Communications response costs. The cost of producing press materials, staffing media response operations, and managing the press cycle.
Regulatory defense expense. The cost of legal counsel during regulatory investigations triggered by a crisis event.
Business interruption from reputational events. Some policies cover lost revenue attributable to reputational damage, though the coverage is harder to underwrite and pay out than the consulting-fee categories.
Notification and remediation costs. For categories involving data breaches, customer harm, or regulated incidents, the cost of customer notification and remediation efforts.
The adjacent product categories
Several adjacent product categories now operate alongside crisis insurance.
Cyber insurance. The largest growth in the broader reputation-protection market has been at the intersection of cyber insurance and crisis communications. Ransomware events, data breach disclosures, and the broader cyber-incident landscape produce reputation consequences that demand integrated insurance-and-communications response. Cyber insurance now routinely bundles crisis communications support inside enterprise policies. See Why Cyber Insurance Carriers Now Vet Your Communications Plan for the underwriting shift.
Reputational risk insurance. Dedicated reputational risk insurance products have emerged from Lloyd's of London syndicates and adjacent specialty operators. The products cover the financial impact of reputation events — share-price declines, customer attrition, regulatory consequences — rather than the communications response itself. The two product categories now operate in parallel.
Director and officer (D&O) coverage. Traditional D&O policies often include some reputation-related coverage, particularly for executive-level crisis events. The coverage is generally narrower than dedicated crisis insurance but provides an entry point for some operators.
Who should consider crisis insurance
The product category makes most sense for operators with elevated operational risk and meaningful reputation exposure. Categories where the discussion is most productive include:
Tourism and hospitality operators, where guest incidents can produce immediate reputation consequences
Healthcare and medical practices, where regulated incidents can produce sustained press cycles
Food service and consumer brands, where product safety events produce category-defining crises
Professional services firms, where partner or executive misconduct can damage the firm's brand
Educational institutions, where incidents involving students or faculty produce sustained public scrutiny
What works better than crisis insurance for many operators
For many operators below the enterprise scale, pre-crisis playbook investment outperforms reactive crisis insurance products. The work includes:
Defined response trees for foreseeable crisis scenarios
Designated spokespersons trained on media response
Drafted statements for the most likely event categories
Regulatory liaison protocols establishing who calls which regulator when
Standing relationships with crisis PR counsel that can be activated quickly
Insurance policies for categories where the financial exposure justifies premium cost
The combination produces better outcomes than buying crisis insurance reactively after an event has begun. The brands that invest in pre-crisis architecture before they need it produce stronger outcomes than the brands that retain crisis support reactively after an event begins.
Insurance and adjacent specialty products covering the costs of crisis events including crisis management consulting, communications response, regulatory defense, and adjacent categories. Traditional enterprise crisis insurance is written by AIG, Chubb, Zurich, Beazley, and adjacent specialty insurers. Mid-market and SMB products have emerged through specialty operators.
What is reputational risk insurance?
Insurance covering the financial impact of reputation events — share-price declines, customer attrition, regulatory consequences — rather than the communications response itself. Lloyd's of London syndicates and adjacent specialty operators write dedicated reputational risk products.
What's the most-leveraged crisis investment available?
Pre-crisis playbook architecture. Defined response trees, designated spokespersons, drafted statements for foreseeable scenarios, regulatory liaison protocols. Brands that invest before an event produce stronger outcomes than brands that retain crisis support reactively.
Should small businesses buy crisis insurance?
Depends on the operational risk profile. Tourism, hospitality, food-service, healthcare, and adjacent categories with elevated incident risk and reputation exposure can reasonably consider mid-market crisis support products. Most operators below the enterprise scale are better served by pre-crisis playbook investment and standing relationships with specialty operators than by traditional insurance products alone.
Written by
EPR Editorial Team
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
