Cumulus Re

This week’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage may have cost billions in lost opportunity and downtime for technology and internet services around the world and could trigger some cyber insurance policies, but it was not significant enough to be considered a Catastrophic Event, Parametrix has told us.

Global reinsurance firm Hannover Re has successfully sponsored a renewal of its landmark parametric cloud outage catastrophe bond, securing $20 million in retrocessional cyber reinsurance protection covering cloud outage events from a new Cumulus Re (Series 2025-1) issuance, with the support of Parametrix.

Analysis from broking group Aon and Parametrix, a specialist in parametric cloud downtime cyber risk transfer, shows that it is possible to gain diversification within cyber portfolios that have cloud outage risk concentrations, with geography one way to achieve that.

The recent global IT systems outage caused by the CrowdStrike event can serve to build more confidence in cyber catastrophe bonds, as some of the biggest questions posed about this new segment of insurance-linked securities (ILS) were about how losses from a major cyber event would manifest, Jonathan Hatzor, CEO of Parametrix told us.

The arrival of the world’s first cloud outage catastrophe bond was viewed very positively, and provides investors with a new avenue into the cyber insurance-linked securities (ILS) space, according to Henning Ludolphs, Managing Director Retrocession and Capital Markets at Hannover Re.

Global reinsurance firm Hannover Re has successfully sponsored a $13.75 million Cumulus Re (Series 2024-1) parametric cloud outage catastrophe bond that was privately issued and placed using the firm’s Kaith Re Ltd. vehicle, with modelling of the cyber risks undertaken by Parametrix.