AI infrastructure creates major risk transfer opportunity for re/insurers: Swiss Re

Underwriting prudence remains vital as digital assets drive accumulation risk.

Asia-Pacific’s investment boom is broadening the reinsurance opportunity as high-value assets and infrastructure expand across the region, from semiconductors and AI data centres to renewable energy, advanced manufacturing and major construction projects.

Key points:
Investment drives risk transfer demand
No single pricing trend in Asia-Pacific
Underwriting prudence remains critical

“The strongest opportunities are linked to the region’s underlying economic growth, infrastructure investment, rising asset values and increasing need for risk transfer,” Anna Ziswiler, Swiss Re’s head of P&C reinsurance for Southeast Asia, India, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea, tells SIRC Today.

Swiss Re Institute estimates that investment in AI data centres and renewable energy could generate around $200 billion in cumulative commercial P&C premiums globally between 2026 and 2030, with about $91 billion linked to AI data centres and $111 billion to renewable energy.

“Increasing investments in semiconductor and AI-related infrastructure across the region are a significant opportunity for insurers and reinsurers to support new digital infrastructure through effective risk transfer,” Ziswiler said. “Renewable energy, including wind, solar and battery energy storage systems, is also gaining momentum as governments seek to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.”

The opportunities, however, differ markedly by market. Taiwan and South Korea are seeing further investment in semiconductors and high-tech manufacturing, while Southeast Asia is attracting data centre, AI infrastructure and alternative-energy projects.

“In India, advanced-manufacturing and large-infrastructure sectors are creating additional capacity needs,” she said. “In Hong Kong, we’ve also noted the potential for specialty lines including marine, precious metals and aviation.”

Investment boom

Yet strong growth in insurable assets does not translate into uniform reinsurance market. Capacity remains plentiful and competition intense across APAC, but pricing and terms vary considerably by geography, line of business, loss experience and individual portfolio.

“It would be misleading to describe APAC through a single pricing trend,” Ziswiler said, noting that Swiss Re continues to base underwriting decisions on its view of the underlying risk and expected loss cost rather than broad regional trends.

Ziswiler moved into the Singapore-based role on August 1 after more than 15 years at Swiss Re spanning underwriting, business development, operations and strategy. She previously managed diversified P&C portfolios across Switzerland, the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

Her first months in the role have focused on getting closer to the individual markets and clients she now oversees.

“My priority has been to listen and build a deeper understanding of the individual markets and client needs across the region,” she said. “Asia is highly diverse, so it is important not to approach it with a single regional lens.”

“It would be misleading to describe APAC through a single pricing trend.”

Interconnected risks

The same investment creating new insurance demand is also placing more value in individual sites, industrial clusters and infrastructure networks.

Swiss Re Institute estimates a modern AI data-centre campus can approach $50 billion in total replacement value. Such facilities also depend on shared power, telecommunications, cooling systems and specialist suppliers, increasing the potential for losses to spread beyond a single asset.

Taiwan illustrates the concentration challenge in high-tech manufacturing. Swiss Re Institute estimates 88% of the island’s semiconductor plants are located in areas of extreme seismic risk.

Natural catastrophe exposures are changing at the same time. Ziswiler pointed to growing concentrations of floating solar and offshore-wind assets in Taiwan and insured values in India’s industrial corridors and coastal regions. South Korea is seeing emerging exposures around AI-related data centres and offshore wind, while Southeast Asia is contending with very different weather patterns.

“Across Southeast Asia, the picture is increasingly varied,” she explained. “Markets like Thailand and Vietnam are dealing with extreme rainfall while others such as Indonesia face hotter and drier conditions.

“El Niño can further shift rainfall and cyclone patterns across the region. Thailand’s consecutive years of flooding demonstrate the vulnerability of businesses and communities and the potential role for public-private partnerships.”

The region’s protection gap remains substantial. Natural catastrophes caused $65 billion of economic losses across Asia in 2025, according to Swiss Re Institute, but only $5.2 billion was insured. Just 8% of those losses were covered, against a previous 10-year average of 17%.

“The priority is to improve exposure transparency and ensure that models, underwriting assumptions and risk-mitigation measures keep pace with how the risk is changing,” Ziswiler said.

Technical underwriting

Ziswiler also sees greater overlap between risks that have traditionally been assessed separately.

“The market needs to look more closely at the interaction between risks rather than considering each one in isolation,” she said. “AI, cyber, critical infrastructure, climate risk, energy transition and supply-chain concentration increasingly overlap.”

“Better data and modelling will help, but these risks still require technical underwriting expertise and human judgement, particularly where historical experience is limited.”

That has different implications across the region. In Taiwan, highly concentrated high-tech and floating-energy exposures require particular attention to accumulation management. In India, Ziswiler said clients increasingly value risk insights and engineering expertise throughout the lifecycle of emerging infrastructure projects.

The discussion with cedants is also becoming broader. “What stands out is how often the conversation extends beyond the purchase of capacity,” she said. Clients are looking at how to pursue growth, manage volatility, use capital more efficiently and understand new concentrations of risk.

Businesses increasingly want partners that can connect global knowledge with local insight and bring underwriting, analytics and tailored solutions together around specific business objectives, she added.

“As economies, infrastructure and technology ecosystems grow, the need for risk expertise and protection grows with them.”

At her first SIRC since taking the role, Ziswiler wants to hear where risks are changing fastest, what is constraining clients’ growth and where Swiss Re’s expertise and capital can be most useful.

“The challenge is to meet that demand while maintaining underwriting prudence in a more competitive market and ensuring that risk knowledge keeps pace with rapidly changing exposures.”

Anna Ziswiler is the head of P&C reinsurance for Southeast Asia, India, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea at Swiss Re.

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