Gross direct premiums written (GDPW) for cyber insurance is estimated globally at just over $15.7bn in 2023 rising to more than $16bn if captive insurers are also included, says Insuramore, a provider of marketing services and related consultancy with a focus solely on the insurance sector.
The research shows that the top 20 groups for this class of insurance are likely to have accounted for 64.9% of premiums worldwide and the top 50 for 89.6% in 2023, down from a respective 70.3% and 92.3% in 2022. Beazley is likely to have been the global market leader with over $1bn in GDPW and was followed in descending order by Chubb, Munich Re, AXA, and Fairfax Financial Holdings.
The US continues to account for over half of the total GDPW, once underwriters operating in Bermuda and at Lloyd’s of London are added to those based in the US itself.
Overall, the research established that close to 300 insurer groups were underwriting cyber risks on a direct basis by the end of 2023. This signifies a mean (average) GDPW per group of $53m but a median of just $3.3m which shows the degree to which there is a very long tail of insurers with small books of cyber insurance activity.
Furthermore, Insuramore has also identified over 400 individual MGA, MGU, and cover-holder enterprises (a.k.a. underwriting agencies) around the world writing cyber insurance on a delegated underwriting authority basis including 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.
On the other hand, modelling a reliable future trajectory for the value of cyber insurance worldwide remains problematic due to the multiple factors impacting the sector. These include, for example, the global outage incident which occurred on 19th July 2024, the implications of which will become clearer in the coming months.
For Insuramore’s updated global ranking of insurer groups as measured by cyber insurance GDPW in 2023, please click here.