Swiss Re disavows catch-up growth in cyber; will hold ‘underweight’

Swiss Re will continue to steer relatively clear of cyber exposures where the market has too little grasp of a young and fast-evolving risk array to properly dive in, a top official has claimed.

“We remain very cautious,” chief underwriting officer Thierry Léger (pictured) told his company’s Investor Day festivities. “We think it is a young line of business, it is not understood well yet and data is scarce.”

For now, Swiss Re is “growing with the market” via an existing book, which it considers to be an “underweight” position. “We wish to be strategically underweight in this line of business.”

“We will remain cautious for the foreseeable future,” he said. Accumulations and wordings are being scrutinised.

Swiss Re enjoyed 59% in gross written premium growth in the segment in 2021, but Léger claims that “only a little” came from an increase in exposure, while the rest came from “explosive” pricing as rising demand hit a market shell-shocked by “a few years of not-so-good combined ratios.”

R&D into cyber towards models continues at a heady pace, Léger insisted. “The one place where we are not underweight is R&D,” Léger said. “We are ready from an R&D perspective for further growth.”

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