Howden Re has hired five professionals for its cyber reinsurance team, setting up a dedicated US presence and broadening the unit's actuarial, modeling and threat intelligence capabilities as the broker moves to capture a larger share of a fast-growing market.
Michael Giuliano (pictured above, left) joins as director in New York from McGill and Partners, where he was a partner working on cyber insurance and reinsurance portfolio solutions for complex clients. He will work alongside the cyber and US casualty teams to develop Howden Re's offering in the US market.
Ram Ramakrishnan (pictured above, right) joins as director leading the cyber actuarial function, arriving from Lockton Re, where he headed analytics for its cyber reinsurance practice.
Lewis Birch joins from Aon as associate director on the broking side, while Georgia Surridge, also from Aon, has been named associate director leading account management. Haakon Pedersen joins the analytics team as an associate from Chaucer.
"These appointments are a direct response to the demand we are seeing from clients," said Luke Foord-Kelcey, managing director and global head of cyber at Howden Re. He said the new recruits would help service the growing client base "on both sides of the Atlantic."
Read more: Howden Re bolsters reinsurance team with London-based senior executives
The buildout reflects accelerating demand for cyber cover globally, but nowhere more so than in the United States, which DUAL has noted accounts for around 70% of global cyber gross written premium.
Munich Re expects global cyber premiums to grow from close to US$15 billion in 2025 to about US$28 billion by 2030, averaging 15% annual growth. Gallagher is more bullish still, forecasting in its 2026 outlook that the market could reach US$30 billion to US$50 billion by the end of the decade.
Reinsurance is central to that story. Research published last year by S&P Global Ratings showed primary insurers ceded around 56% of cyber premiums to reinsurers in 2023, a far higher share than most property and casualty classes.
Cyber reinsurers' net combined ratio also improved to 89% in 2023 from 104% in 2021, the agency said, underpinning the strong appetite Howden Re has flagged at recent renewals.
The US opportunity is sizeable. IMARC Group valued the country's cyber insurance market at US$3.9 billion in 2025 and expects it to reach US$16.5 billion by 2034, a compound annual growth rate of 17.4%.
Regulation is adding momentum: the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act takes effect in May 2026, and DUAL has warned the US cyber combined ratio could breach 100% by 2027 if current pricing trends persist.
Howden Re's expansion coincides with conditions it flagged at the early 2026 renewals, where Foord-Kelcey noted "plentiful capacity and strong reinsurer appetite remain to the cedents' advantage."
Terms broadly mirrored 2025, with ceding commissions on quota share business rising 1% to 1.5% and stop-loss pricing falling 15% to 20%.
