Gallagher Re has launched a digital risk practice, pulling AI liability, data centers, cyber, and digital risk engineering into a single advisory function. The move comes as technology-driven accumulation exposures increasingly cut across multiple insurance lines simultaneously.
Ian Newman leads it as global head of digital risk, alongside his existing role as global head of cyber. Freddie Scarratt, previously global deputy head of insurtech, takes on AI liability lead. Luca Drane has been appointed data centers lead.
The three appointments consolidate expertise previously spread across separate functions within Gallagher Re's global products and practices platform. The firm said the practice would help clients translate technology exposures into underwriting, accumulation, and capital insights.
The structure reflects a recognized market problem. Digital dependency has created risk concentrations that do not map neatly onto existing product lines. A single technology failure can affect cyber policies, property portfolios, business interruption cover, and casualty placements at the same time.
The July 2024 CrowdStrike outage illustrated that exposure. A faulty software update affected 8.5 million Windows devices globally. Guy Carpenter estimated insured losses at between $300 million and $1 billion. CyberCube Analytics put the figure between $400 million and $1.5 billion. Parametrix calculated total damages to Fortune 500 companies at approximately $5.4 billion.
The gap between economic loss and insured loss in that event reflects the coverage shortfall that accumulation-focused practices are designed to address.
A Swiss Re Institute sigma report published in March projected global insurance premiums tied to data centers rising to $24.2 billion by 2030. The current figure stands at $10.6 billion. Capital spending by the five largest cloud providers is forecast to exceed $600 billion in 2026.
Roughly 75% of that spend is directly tied to physical AI infrastructure housed in large data centers. Construction costs for a single facility can exceed $20 billion before technology installation.
The Swiss Re Institute noted that large data centers concentrate multiple tenants and insured interests behind shared critical systems. Power, cooling, and fire protection failures can generate multiple concurrent claims from a single event. Separate insurance programmes for different site components can obscure total exposure within a reinsurer's portfolio.
Scarratt co-authored a Gallagher Re report on AI model risk in March. That report identified AI model failures as a source of aggregation risk across ceded portfolios. Exposures span existing cyber, casualty, and errors and omissions coverage.
The practice's AI liability lead position reflects demand from cedants for reinsurance guidance on a class without settled policy language or established loss history. Munich Re's fourth Global Cyber Risk and Insurance Survey, published in May, found 63% of C-level executives wanted to buy insurance against AI-related risks. The same survey put the global cyber insurance market at US$15 billion. In that survey, 71% of C-level respondents identified AI as the technology most relevant to their business, up from 62% in 2024.
"Clients and markets are increasingly seeking guidance on the implications of AI and digital dependency, not only within cyber but across a wide range of business lines," Newman said.
The practice will operate across property, casualty, and specialty classes within Gallagher Re's broader platform. The firm said the scope reflected its view that digital risk now cuts across the full range of insurance lines it serves.
