The rapid expansion of physical infrastructure supporting artificial intelligence is the biggest opportunity for the re/insurance industry in history, an executive has told PwC’s Insurance Summit at Hamilton Princess & Beach Club.

Joe Peiser, CEO of Risk Capital at Aon sees it as such a milestone, he compared its societal and economic magnitude to historic milestones such as the 19th-century buildout of the railways or the electrification of modern society.

His remarks came during a panel discussion titled “From Volatility to Opportunity: Growth Strategies for Tomorrow”, during a conference where global re/insurance leaders gathered to examine how macroeconomic, technological and environmental turbulence is reshaping risk transfer.

Mr Peiser framed current market headwinds not as an insurmountable threat, but as a defining opportunity for the sector to demonstrate its core value to corporate executive teams.

Given the immense capital scale and financial risk of multibillion-dollar data centre projects, insurance has become central to project financing and construction design.

Mr Peiser noted that re/insurers are actively collaborating with hyperscalers and builders to prioritise risk management early, directly improving project insurability.

Market capacity has responded aggressively: single-project construction insurance capacity surged from $8 billion or $9 billion last year to $14 billion or $15 billion today, together with projections that within the next 12 months it could reach $20 billion.

He rejected external perceptions of the industry as slow or stodgy, arguing that re/insurers possess a strong track record of “reactive creativity,” having successfully created entire asset classes in recent years such as cyber, environmental and employment practices liability insurance.

The Aon executive offered a candid assessment, predicting that clarity surrounding AI insurance coverage will likely only be settled through actual claims and court litigation.

He stressed the critical need for extreme organisational agility, sharing an internal example at Aon where a long-term technology strategy set in January was rendered obsolete through the AI software or large language model, Claude, by May, forcing leadership to adapt quickly and abandon outdated plans.

Moderated by PwC’s Arthur Wightman, a panel discussion featured commentary from Nancy Bewlay, executive vice president and global chief underwriting officer at AIG, and Jerome Halgan, CEO of Arch Global Reinsurance Group.

Supported by insights from Ms Bewlay on technical modelling discipline and Mr Halgan on avoiding soft-market complacency, the panel concluded that turning volatility into sustainable growth requires matching abundant market capital with rigorous underwriting discipline.

Ms Bewlay emphasised the need to ensure that new products being created for clients, address the real risks of the emerging scenarios.

She said: “That careful evaluation of where does coverage respond — how we define the scenario and measure the impact — is incredibly important so that we can create a sustainable product.”

Mr Halgan emphasised the need for quality underwriting: “You have to be able to understand risk and price it. It's all about the underwriting exercise. And in order to do that well, you need to scale.”

He spoke of building the correct product and improving it, including crunching and absorbing data to understand results, including losses.