Artificial intelligence developers are increasingly turning to insurers as providers of capital for building infrastructure such as data centres and chip plants.

That was the word from Financial Times United States private equity and deals editor Antoine Gara in a webinar about the changing insurance industry.

“There is a lot of innovation to come up with structures to raise investment-grade debt and attract insurance money,” Mr Gara said. “That has been key to unlocking trillions of dollars.”

From an underwriting perspective, speaker Greg Crawford, managing editor of P&C Specialist pointed to an information gap.

“When it comes to AI data centres, some insurance companies are still trying to get their heads around what it is they are covering,” Mr Crawford said. “Is it business insurance or the development of it?”

He pointed to Arbol, a New York-based specialty managing general agency, which has just launched parametric coverage for delays in data centre construction.

“I have not seen anything like that before,” Mr Crawford said.

He said commercial insurance is broadly in a softening period with prices largely declining.

“There is still a lot of capacity out there, not only primary insurance but also reinsurance,” he said. “It is not super costly.”

However, he said there was a lot of demand for cyber and data-centre-related coverage, but not so much capacity. “So you are seeing prices in cyber continuing to increase,” he said.

Mr Crawford said many insurers are tremendously profitable right now.

He pointed to Chubb’s newly released third quarter financial statements that reported third quarter net income of $2.84 billion, and earning per share of $7.30, respectively, up 4.4 per cent compared with the same period last year.

“Some of their metrics missed expectations,” Mr Crawford said, “but by and large, their earnings per share pretty much blew the Street out of the water.”

He said Chubb’s chief executive Evan Greenberg had, in an earnings call yesterday, warned about “naive capital”, hungry for returns.

He said many insurance executives like Mr Greenberg are worried that with this wave of capital some firms will be taking more naive risks.

“That could spoil the party for everyone,” he said.