cyber reinsurance

At the 2025 Artemis insurance-linked securities (ILS) conference in New York City, Richard Gray, Head of Third-Party Capital at specialist insurer Beazley, spoke with AM Best about the rapid growth and potential of cyber catastrophe bonds.

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.

Reinsurance broker Gallagher Re recently launched its Cyber Risk Adjusted Rating (RAR) Index, revealing that its value was 100% higher on January 1st, 2025, compared to January 1st 2020, indicating higher rates-on-line, as the cyber market continues to grow amid an evolving risk landscape.

According to Gallagher Securities, the specialist insurance-linked securities (ILS) and investment banking arm of reinsurance broker Gallagher Re, the future of the cyber ILS market is not a question of growth, but rather how quickly the market can evolve to meet evolving opportunities and challenges.

Lockton Re, the reinsurance arm of the independent broking group, has now confirmed the role former Gallagher Re executive Theo Norris has taken at the firm, appointing him UK Capital Markets Structuring and Cyber ILS Leader.

According to a new report authored by Tom Johansmeyer, Global Head of Index Classes, at broker Price Forbes Re, several forms of reinsurance could help support longer-term cyber re/insurance market growth, however, new sources of capital will have to form, along with participation from the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market.

Further innovation in risk modelling and policy standardisation can help the cyber insurance and reinsurance community unlock more support from the capital markets through catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) markets, the Geneva Association has explained.

The global IT outage caused by a defective software update from CrowdStrike has highlighted the “persistent uncertainty” in the cyber catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) asset class, rating agency AM Best said, also highlighting that there is uncertainty surrounding the tail and potential for loss development, which it seems is misunderstood.

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.

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.