Case Study

Digital cyber liability insurance certificates

Sutcliffe & Co use BlockMark Registry to issue and manage their cyber liability insurance certificates.

About Sutcliffe & Co
Based in Worcester, Sutcliffe & Co is a specialist insurance broker with four generations of family heritage behind it. The firm arranges cover for thousands of business and personal clients across the UK, and has built a particular reputation in cyber risk — holding BIBA’s Cyber Insurance Broker Accreditation and working closely with the IASME Consortium on Cyber Essentials-linked insurance products. As cyber threats have grown from a large-enterprise concern into a risk facing businesses of every size, Sutcliffe & Co has positioned itself at the forefront of making cyber cover accessible, understandable, and fast to deliver for its clients.

The Challenge
Working with a global insurer, Sutcliffe & Co delivers cyber liability insurance to organisations that achieve Cyber Essentials certification through IASME, meeting the eligibility criteria and opt-in. This model depends on a straightforward premise: certification and insurance need to move together. As soon as a business earns its Cyber Essentials certificate, where applicable its cyber liability cover should follow immediately, without manual processing, paperwork delays, or a disconnect between the certifying body and the insurer.

At the volumes Sutcliffe & Co process — tens of thousands of certifications a year — that meant they needed a way to issue, manage, and update digital insurance certificates automatically, in step with the certification process itself, and with the flexibility to handle policyholders who later choose to increase their level of cover.

The Solution
Sutcliffe & Co integrated BlockMark Registry’s API directly into their certification and policy issuance workflow. As each Cyber Essentials certification is confirmed, a corresponding cyber liability insurance certificate is generated and issued automatically through the platform; giving policyholders a verifiable, digital certificate the moment their cover goes live, with no manual intervention required.

To date, Sutcliffe & Co has issued more than 60,000 certificates through the BlockMark Registry API, making it one of the highest-volume users of the platform’s automated issuance service.

The platform also evolved to support Sutcliffe & Co’s enhanced cover proposition. Using BlockMark’s certificate upgrade feature, when a policyholder chooses to move to a higher level of cover, their existing certificate is used to seamlessly provide the information for a new certificate reflecting the increased level of cover. This feature has enabled Sutcliffe & Co to reduce administrative time and cost.

Results

60,000+ insurance certificates issued via automated API integration, removing manual processing from a high-volume workflow
Real-time issuance tied directly to Cyber Essentials certification, so cover and proof of cover are in step
Seamless upgrades to enhanced cover levels, supporting a smoother path for policyholders who want to increase protection
A scalable foundation for Sutcliffe & Co’s continued growth in the cyber insurance space, without adding administrative overhead

Looking Ahead
With cyber risk continuing to climb up the agenda for SMEs and larger organisations alike, Sutcliffe & Co’s use of BlockMark Registry demonstrates how automated, API-driven certificate issuance can support an insurance broker scaling a high-volume, certification-linked product — while keeping every certificate accurate, verifiable, and easy for policyholders to access. new certificate reflecting the increased level of cover. This feature has enabled Sutcliffe & Co to reduce administrative time and cost.

“Integrating BlockMark Registry into our cyber liability workflow has enabled us to operate efficiently at scale. The upgrade feature has been just as valuable in reducing our office work load.”
Duncan Sutcliffe, Managing Director, Sutcliffe & Co.