According to Insuramore’s global rankings, cyber insurance gross direct premiums written (GDPW) valued at just over USD 15.7 billion in 2023, rising towards more than USD 16 billion if captive insurers are also included too.
In a statement, Insuramore said, that with regards to the competitive structure of the market, this shows that the top 20 groups for this class are likely to have accounted for 64.9% of premiums worldwide and the top 50 for 89.6%, down from a respective 70.3% and 92.3% in 2022.
According to the organisation, Beazley is likely to have been the global market leader, boasting over USD 1 billion in GDPW.
The specialist insurer was then followed in descending order by Chubb, Munich Re, AXA and Fairfax Financial Holdings.
As a result, the research conducted by Insuramore shows that close to 300 insurer groups were underwriting cyber risks on a direct basis by the end of 2023, signifying an average GDPW per group of USD 53 million, but a median of just USD 3.3 million, which clearly demonstrates the degree to which there is a very long tail of insurers with small books of cyber insurance activity.
Nonetheless, Insuramore has reportedly identified over 400 individual MGA, MGU and cover-holder enterprises across the globe writing cyber insurance on a delegated underwriting authority basis, which includes several – such as At-Bay, CFC Group and Coalition – making partial use of their own underwriting vehicles.
“Looking ahead, the trend towards fragmentation implied by the preceding comparison of the global market share of the top 20 and top 50 groups in 2022 and 2023 is likely to continue in 2024 as cyber business expands more rapidly outside of the US, where premium rates have tended to decline in recent months,” Insuramore said.
The firm noted, however, that modelling a reliable future trajectory for the value of cyber insurance worldwide “remains problematic”, which is mostly due to the multiple factors impacting the sector.
A key example is the recent global outage incident which occurred on July 19, 2024, “the implications of which will become clearer in the coming months,” Insuramore noted.
Analysts at global re/insurance broker Aon, stated that the global IT outage is an opportunity for the re/insurance market “to react by improving granularity on codifying policy information important for understanding portfolio accumulation risks stemming from certain coverage grants.”
