UK insurer tops global cyber GWP rankings

London-based insurer Beazley has narrowly topped the rankings of the world’s biggest cyber insurers by gross written premium (GWP), according to the latest data released by market analysis firm Insuramore.   

According to Insuramore’s data, Beazley was the largest single insurer by share of the cyber market in 2023, accounting for 6.68% of the sector’s GWP. 

The analyst placed Beazley’s likely cyber GWP at £827m ($1.05bn) for 2023, which narrowly edged out Swiss insurer Chubb’s figure of £811m ($1.03bn). 

Chubb came in second place for the largest global cyber insurer by GWP with, in descending order, Munich Re, Axa and Fairfax Financial Holdings populating the rest of the top five. 

Size of the market

Insuramore’s approximation of the global size of the cyber market placed it at a total of £12.4bn ($15.7bn).

The top five cyber insurers accounted for just under 30% of the global market, with all other insurance groups making up the remaining 70.65% of the line’s GWP. 

When extending this to the top 20 cyber insurers, their combined GWP accounted for 64.9% of premiums. The top 50, on the other hand, control a full 89.6%, which was a fall from 92.3% in 2022. 

Insuramore said: “Looking ahead, the trend towards fragmentation implied by the comparison of the global market share of the top 20 and top 50 groups in 2022 and 2023 is likely to continue in 2024 as cyber business expands more rapidly outside of the US, where premium rates have tended to decline in recent months. 

“On the other hand, modelling a reliable future trajectory for the value of cyber insurance worldwide remains problematic due to the multiple factors impacting the sector. These include, for example, the global outage incident which occurred on 19 July 2024, the implications of which will become clear in the coming months.”