Asia-Pacific is on course to more than triple its data centre capacity by 2030, but new claims data from one of the world's largest commercial insurers suggests the insurance market supporting that build-out is not yet equipped to handle what is coming.
A report published by Allianz Commercial finds that installed data centre capacity across Asia-Pacific, excluding China, is projected to grow from around 9GW today to more than 28GW by 2030, with Malaysia alone expected to grow more than tenfold. Annual investment globally is on track to nearly double from around US$500 billion in 2024 to more than US$1 trillion as early as 2027. The global data centre insurance market is projected to more than double from around US$11 billion today to more than US$24 billion by 2030.
For the region's insurers and brokers, the Allianz Commercial findings carry a specific warning: some of Asia-Pacific's fastest-growing data centre markets are also among the most climate-exposed on earth.
Allianz Commercial's data finds that chronic heat and drought stress is greatest in Asia-Pacific, where 89% of capacity is already exposed. Johor, in Malaysia - one of the region's fastest-growing data centre hubs - is specifically identified as both a high-growth and high-climate-exposure market. Typhoons, earthquakes and volcanic activity add further location risk across markets including Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia.
The nat cat dimension is compounded by construction patterns. Around 79% of global data centre capacity is located in areas with heightened natural catastrophe risk, while the pace of expansion in Asia-Pacific is pushing new projects into secondary markets with less well-understood risk profiles. Data centre construction costs across Asia-Pacific rose an average of 10% year-on-year in 2025, according to Cushman & Wakefield's Data Centre Construction Cost Guide 2026, meaning replacement values are moving targets that require active review at every renewal cycle.
Allianz Commercial's analysis of insurance industry data centre claims found that fire accounts for well over 50% of around €700 million (US$800 million) in analysed losses globally, making it the dominant driver of severity. Natural catastrophe activity ranks second, followed by deliberate acts - including crime and cyber incidents - and power failure. Business interruption is the primary driver of claims severity by line of insurance.
Charlotte Field, regional head of short-tail claims for Asia at Allianz Commercial, said documentation clarity was critical at the point of loss. "Clearly documented handovers are essential between your construction all-risk policy and operational policy," she said. "There must be no ambiguity about practical completion, in order to avoid disputes over which policy responds to a particular event and the extent of cover."
The structural mismatch between how data centres are assessed and what they actually represent as insured risks is increasingly visible across the region. Businesses across South-East Asia face median annual costs of up to US$165.5 million from high-impact IT outages. That figure is more than double the global median, according to New Relic's 2025 Observability Forecast, highlighting how damaging downtime can be in a market where digital infrastructure is scaling rapidly.
The Swiss Re Institute's sigma insights report on insuring AI data centre risks, published in July, noted that large data centres are sometimes presented to insurers through separate programmes - covering buildings, equipment, and power plants independently - making it difficult for carriers to track overall exposure. A single loss event can therefore impact several insurance programmes simultaneously.
Allianz Commercial's claims case studies show that in hyperscale facilities, damage to external cooling systems, hot works-related fire damage and power-disturbance-related start-up delays have each generated losses in the US$50 million to US$100 million range. Construction costs for a single AI campus can exceed US$20 billion before computing equipment is installed.
Christian Kolbe, global head of construction claims at Allianz Commercial, said the underwriting question had fundamentally shifted. "For insurers, the key question is not only the value of the building, but the concentration of value and dependency inside and around it," he said. "Power, cooling, batteries, fibre routes, testing and commissioning, and business continuity planning are all part of the same risk picture."
South Korea's insurers are already grappling with how to price 18.4GW of planned AI data centre capacity, with Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance developing AI data centre risk assessment guidelines for release in the second half of 2026. Hyundai Marine & Fire Insurance and Hanwha General Insurance are also reviewing their approaches to the market.
Across the region, brokers are increasingly required to navigate jurisdiction-specific underwriting requirements as insurers differentiate their appetite based on regulatory standards, supply chain stability and power grid resilience. Early engagement with underwriters - before construction begins rather than at placement - is becoming a competitive differentiator for brokers working in the sector.
Thomas Lillelund, chief executive of Allianz Commercial, said the scale of the investment cycle had made insurance foundational to project financing. "Comprehensive insurance cover has become a prerequisite for financing many large-scale AI infrastructure projects," he said. "Success will increasingly depend on resilience: access to power, reliable supply chains, robust construction controls, as well as climate-aware site selection and insurance programmes that reflect the true accumulation risk."
For brokers across Asia-Pacific, the Allianz Commercial findings are a prompt to review not just whether clients have data centre exposure - but whether the coverage they hold was ever designed for the asset they are actually operating.
