Zurich, the European headquartered global re/insurance company, said this morning its has secured a significant $1 billion quota share reinsurance arrangement to support its growing business in underwriting data centre risks, while it has also broken out its US peak peril catastrophe reinsurance tower in its disclosures, now showing its recent catastrophe bond.
With industry activity in insuring large and hyperscaler data centre projects accelerating at pace and Zurich a key player in that market, the company has now secured meaningful reinsurance support for its efforts there.
Explaining, “Zurich entered into a new data center construction quota share reinsurance arrangement, providing up to USD 1 billion of risk capacity to support the growth of its global data center portfolio.”
Capacity remains constrained for these growing data centre risks. The potential role for the ILS market in this emerging area of risk transfer is set to be the topic of a panel discussion at our Artemis London 2026 conference.
Zurich also added quota shares for energy onshore risks and corporate liability in recent months as well.
Global data centre demand is cited as a driver for accelerated premium growth at Zurich, as “growing AI demand continues to boost the need for data center infrastructure not just in the U.S. but also across the globe.”
The company said its has underwritten at least 500 projects, with 70% of them seeing Zurich acting as the lead.
The new $1 billion data centre construction quota share reinsurance arrangement is designed to “support strategic growth” in this critical opportunity.
At the reinsurance renewals, Zurich explained that its, “Existing treaties renewed, with selected increases in protection purchased at improved risk-adjusted economics.”
As usual, Zurich has disclosed its core catastrophe reinsurance arrangements alongside its results today, which for the first-time now show the US peak perils as a distinct tower.
The driver for this is the addition of its $150 million Turicum Re Ltd. (Series 2026-1) catastrophe bond, which provides a multi-year and fully-collateralized source of US named storm and earthquake reinsurance protection for the company.
Typically, Zurich has featured just a US all-perils catastrophe reinsurance tower in its disclosures, as last seen after the January reinsurance renewals when it expanded its aggregate coverage.
But, with the addition of dedicated US peak peril protection from Turicum Re cat bond, Zurich has now split that out, as seen in the latest catastrophe reinsurance tower disclosure below.
On the left, the US peak peril reinsurance tower shows the Turicum Re catastrophe bond at the top and then the $650 million layer is Zurich’s retention, which is unchanged with the US all perils tower.
The fact this new tower has deserved breaking out shows the importance of the cat bond to Zurich and it will be interesting to see if the cat bond protection grows over the coming years.
The only change to the US all perils catastrophe reinsurance tower sees a slightly larger top-layer from the North America earthquake swap, which has grown in size to $225 million, from $215 million after the January renewals.
The Europe all perils catastrophe reinsurance tower now has a lower retention of $489 million, down from $505 million after January. However, the regional cat treaty has also shrunk to $449 million, down from $550 million after the January renewal signalling a slight reduction in protection from this tower overall.
The rest of the world all perils catastrophe reinsurance tower remains unchanged, having been renewed at January 1st, while the global aggregate cat treaty also remains as it was after the renewals at the start of the year when Zurich upsized this frequency protection slightly.
The addition of the data centre quota share is a meaningful signal of the reinsurance and risk capital needed by the industry to support these large and high-value construction projects and their ongoing running.
There has been significant discussion in the market of the role for insurance-linked securities here, something we will be exploring as part of the agenda of our upcoming Artemis London 2026 conference (details here).
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