Full Capacity: Cyber’s promise facing a confidence gap? 

May 9 2026 by

Welcome to Full Capacity, a weekly briefing on all the most important developments of the past week with a personal take on the news from our editor-in-chief, Mithun Varkey, delivered to your inbox every Saturday.   

M&A spotlight. BP Marsh-backed Australian underwriting agency ATC Insurance Solutions has acquired Frontier Global Underwriting, a specialty financial lines MGA and London market wholesale broking group.

Frontier founders Sophie Fraser and Joel Pridmore will continue to lead the business under ATC ownership.

Cautious move. Swiss Re said that it has trimmed its treaty volume by 8% at 1.4 renewals, writing US$2.3 billion in premiums, due to a “more challenging” pricing environment and a continuation of the market softening seen during 1.1 renewals.

Capital growth. In 2025, the global reinsurance industry hit record capital of US$648 billion (up 11% from 2024) and a 19.3% ROE, according to a Gallagher Re report. Returns are expected to moderate to 14–15% in 2026.

Soft outlook. According to Aon’s Q1 2026 report, Asia’s insurance market continued to soften despite rising Middle East tensions, driven by strong 2025 insurer results and new entrants enabling greater diversification of insurer panels.

Structural challenges. According to Swiss Re, economic growth is the main driver of rising flood-related insured lossesin Asia.

In China, built-up areas in flood zones grew 480% (1975–2025), and the exposed population rose 76%, Swiss Re Institute data showed.

Reality check

Cyber is the insurance industry’s biggest growth engine. Yet some of the industry’s heaviest hitters are either handing off the keys or just sitting on the sidelines.

Take Allianz Commercial. This week, the insurer announced that it has effectively outsourced its standalone commercial cyber underwriting to Coalition.

Key functions, including pricing, product development, risk mitigation, and claims management, will now move to Coalition, and so will a number of Allianz Commercial’s cyber specialists focused on larger corporate risks.

The rationale, as Allianz board member Chris Townsend put it, is straightforward: “Cyber threats differ fundamentally from traditional risks, demanding a dynamic, tech-forward approach.”

Then there’s Berkshire Hathaway. Vice chairman of insurance operations Ajit Jain made it clear this week that the group is largely sitting on the sidelines.

The demand story is not in question. Cyber coverage is expanding rapidly across markets. The hesitation lies elsewhere.

First is the fundamental underwriting challenge: how bad can losses really get? Jain admits Berkshire cannot yet answer that with sufficient confidence.

Aggregation risk remains deeply uncertain, and recent events – from SolarWinds to a CrowdStrike-style outage – highlight how quickly losses could cascade. The industry still lacks a clear view of the upper bound.

That uncertainty is compounded by market structure.

As Howden Re noted in a recent report, the cyber insurance market remains relatively concentrated, with the top ten carriers accounting for around 40% of premiums. Reinsurance is even more concentrated, with roughly 87% held by the top ten players.

This concentration increases the potential impact of underwriting shifts.

The cyber market does not require a 1-in-200-year loss to harden materially; losses on the scale of a moderate property catastrophe year, such as 2008, would likely prompt a significant response. A cyber event approaching that level could drive meaningful market dislocation.

A strategic retrenchment or withdrawal by one or more leading (re)insurers could have a disproportionate effect on capacity and pricing dynamics.

Second is pricing. After a period of strong rate increases, the market is softening.

Loss experience has been relatively benign, competition has intensified, and premiums are beginning to drift lower. Berkshire, true to form, has little appetite for entering a line just as pricing weakens.

As Jain put it, the firm is “sort of sitting on the sidelines” – though not indefinitely. “I’m not sure when,” he said, “but I’m pretty certain that the day will come when we have a fairly significant role to play in cyber.”

That tension captures the current state of the market. Cyber insurance is growing quickly, but with softening rates, unresolved aggregation risk, and wide divergence in loss modelling, even the industry’s most sophisticated players are proceeding with caution.

People moves

Aon has strengthened its regional leadership, naming Richard Tan as chief commercial officer for Southeast Asia, Maggie Hsieh for North Asia, and Michel Muganza as growth strategy and& sales enablement leader for APAC.

Lockton has made two key CEO appointments – Nicholas Lee in Malaysia and Jay Sharma in India.

Meanwhile, Munich Re Retakaful has named Kevin Rethual as its new CEO.

Over at Zurich Malaysia, Wayne Leow steps in as country head for commercial insurance.

Do check out our weekly people move round-up to stay up to speed on the most important appointments in the region.

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