Securitization critical to meet data centre opportunity risk capital needs: Guy Carpenter CEO Klisura

In order for the global insurance and reinsurance industry to meet the significant risk capital needs of the AI infrastructure and data centre build-out opportunity, securitization and third-party capital are going to be critical, Dean Klisura, CEO of Guy Carpenter said today.

But, the size of the opportunity is seen as so large that investors are going to need to have deep pockets, the CEO explained during a Marsh earnings call today.

Underwriting the data centre build-out, where technology giants, hyperscalers and artificial intelligence start-ups are deploying hundreds of billions of dollars to construct new capacity to power and serve their computationally intense software and services, is seen as perhaps the biggest new opportunity for re/insurers of recent decades.

Estimates suggest billions in premiums will need to be underwritten to support the risk management and transfer needs of data centres and other technology infrastructure over the coming years.

Marsh and its reinsurance broking arm Guy Carpenter recognise the opportunity and on the reinsurance side there is a belief that capital market participation is essential to deliver the risk transfer limit that is going to be required.

Speaking during Marsh’s fourth-quarter earnings call today, Dean Klisura, CEO of Guy Carpenter stated, “I think this is a significant new business opportunity in 2026 for both cedents and reinsurers.”

He continued, “There’s been estimates of up to $10 billion of new premium entering the market in 2026 because of these opportunities and the market needs more capacity. No cedent is going to put up billions of dollars of capacity for a single location risk.

“So that’s a real issue. All of our clients want to write data centres across ten plus products globally, but they require additional reinsurance protections.

“Everybody’s concerned with accumulations in portfolios, and we’re solving that right now for our clients.”

All of the major insurance and reinsurance brokers have been placing increasing focus and emphasis on the data centre opportunity in recent months, with this now a core of every company’s messaging.

Capturing that opportunity for their firms, by serving the risk transfer and risk capital needs of their clients, is seen as critical by broking C-suites around the world and given the numbers mooted, it’s an opportunity not to be missed.

Klisura went on to make it clear that all capital sources will be required to meet the risk and premium limit needs of the data centre opportunity.

“I think we need to bring new capital to the market,” Klisura said on the earnings call today.

Continuing to explain that, “It’s not going to just be traditional reinsurance capital. The introduction of third-party capital and securitizing some of these risks via sidecars and other vehicles is going to be critical, and these are going to have to be deep pocketed investors given the size of these risks.”

He reiterated, “We think this is the single biggest new business opportunity in 2026.”

It’s going to be interesting to see how creative structuring might enable capital market investors to supply capital to support elements of the risks, importantly those that appeal to investor appetites, that need insuring and transferring from data centres and high-tech infrastructure.

Whether risks can be carved out and segregated in such a way that they might appeal to investors in fully-securitized 144A catastrophe bond form remains to be seen. As the opportunity grows, it is possible though.

We could even see very large investors supporting the data centre build-out finding that risk transfer for any catastrophe exposure their portfolio of data centre’s may face would be appealing. Much as we’ve seen with investors that have very large real estate investment portfolios that have turned to the cat bond market, such as Blackstone (a major global investor in data centres).

But risk-sharing structures, such as sidecars, may be an efficient way for investors to access the risk-linked returns these data centre opportunities can deliver, through partnerships with re/insurers as well.

If the data centre built-out and the role of re/insurers in it is a topic that interests you, read more about it over at our sister publication Reinsurance News.