cyber ILW

While 2025 has been quiet so far in the 144A cyber catastrophe bond market, interest in this risk class continues to rise and Brittany Baker, VP of Solution Consulting at CyberCube told us that investors are increasingly working the peril into their investment and fund mandates to be ready when the next issuance comes.

Beazley’s Group Chief Underwriting Officer Paul Bantick explained this morning how the company has prepared itself to respond to the evolving cyber threat landscape, laying out the importance of its reinsurance and cyber insurance-linked securities (ILS) protection, while also providing an insight into its exposure to recent events.

Analysis from reinsurance broker Howden Re suggests that a cyber catastrophe industry loss event of $9 billion or more would result in more meaningful losses to the outstanding cyber cat bond market, and that cat bond may outperform on a recovery basis for cedents.

One of the prerequisites for a growing cyber insurance and reinsurance market is that availability of retrocession must increase, with the capital markets at scale needed to support event-based retrocession covers, according to broker Howden Re.

While it has been growing its cyber underwriting business, specialist insurer Beazley has also implemented a robust hedging strategy to control the tail, recently securing a $290 million cyber industry loss warranty (ILW) cover and securing its third PoleStar Re cyber catastrophe bond.

The US cyber insurance industry loss index launched in 2023 by PERILS AG and CyberAcuView has now been expanded to also include reporting on unintentional, or accidental, cyber insurance industry loss events.

According to reinsurance broker Guy Carpenter, CrowdStrike is not a particularly significant cyber catastrophe event and only represents a “Kitty Cat”, or mid-sized catastrophe loss, while the broker estimates industry losses will be between $300 million and $1 billion.

Property Claim Services (PCS), the unit of Verisk that is a provider of industry loss estimates and loss data globally, has designated the recent CrowdStrike linked global IT outage as a PCS Cyber Catastrophe Loss Event, meaning industry insured losses are expected to reach above US $250 million, Artemis has learned.

Property Claim Services (PCS), the provider of industry loss estimates and loss data globally and a unit of Verisk, has designated two cyber attacks as PCS Cyber Catastrophe Loss Events, meaning they are each expected to result in more than US $250 million of industry insured losses, Artemis has learned.

The US cyber insurance industry loss index launched by PERILS AG and CyberAcuView has been used for both a 144A cyber catastrophe bond and a cyber industry-loss warranty (ILW) transaction, the companies have said.