Pricing the outage: how we model systemic cyber aggregation

Cyber severity is rarely driven by one insured. The larger concern is a shared dependency that can create losses across hundreds or thousands of policies at the same time.

Global RE reviews cloud regions, managed service providers, payment infrastructure, and identity platforms as accumulation points before considering price or line size.

The analysis starts with declared technology dependencies and is then cross-checked against industry concentration assumptions. Where data is thin, the exposure is stress-tested rather than treated as diversified by default.

Scenario work considers outage duration, contractual notification duties, business interruption waiting periods, liability triggers, and whether one event can activate more than one coverage part.

Strong segmentation, named supplier limits, precise event definitions, and transparent cedant controls can all improve the underwriting view. Broad dependent-business-interruption language without dependency data usually has the opposite effect.

The result is an appetite decision that reflects probable accumulation, not only the expected loss on an individual account.