Cyber Insurance’s $5B Premiums Prediction

Amid concerns that some sectors of tech are slowing, there is one subset that is likely to keep growing, and that is cyber insurance. One set of forecasts has the market surging ahead in the near term.

As reported on Thursday (May 5) by CIO Dive, citing a presentation by David Bradford, cofounder of insurance observer Advisen, the cyber insurance market is big enough to have generated $2.5 billion in premiums in the past year. The market is growing to the point where it will have garnered as much as $5 billion in premiums by 2020, and the roster of companies should expand well beyond the current list of 60 firms that offer cyber insurance policies.

The market is small enough presently that it pales against the scope of, say, the auto insurance market, where there are premiums totaling as much as $25 billion annually. The worker comp market, stated the site, is worth a whopping $55 billion, as measured by premiums. The growth will come even as some level of maturing should help the industry as it picks through pricing issues and debuting new products.

In his remarks, Bradford stated: “When it comes down to it, cyber insurance is not a substitute for information security,” adding that insurance “can be a backstop for when things go wrong.”

CIO Dive stated that there are estimates that are even more sanguine than Bradford’s, with PwC estimating that the sector could log as much as $7.5 billion in premiums by 2020, with a nod toward how quickly cybersecurity is growing relative to the overall insurance landscape.