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Gallagher Re launches digital risk practice to tackle AI exposure gaps
The new unit is aimed at helping clients translate technology failures into underwriting, accumulation, and capital insights, citing the CrowdStrike outage as an example of uninsured shortfalls.
Gallagher Re, the reinsurance arm of Arthur J. Gallagher, has launched a digital risk practice that consolidates AI liability, data centers, cyber, and digital risk engineering into a single advisory function.
The move is led by Ian Newman as global head of digital risk, alongside his existing role as global head of cyber, with Freddie Scarratt taking on AI liability lead and Luca Drane appointed data centers lead. Gallagher Re said the structure reflects a market issue, where digital dependency can create risk concentrations that span multiple insurance lines at once.
The firm pointed to the July 2024 CrowdStrike outage, when a faulty software update affected 8.5 million Windows devices globally. Gallagher Re noted estimates of insured losses ranged from $300 million to $1 billion, depending on the model, while Parametrix put total economic damages to Fortune 500 companies at about $5.4 billion.
Gallagher Re also linked the change to a growing data center and AI footprint, citing a Swiss Re Institute projection that insurance premiums tied to data centers could rise to $24.2 billion by 2030, from $10.6 billion currently. The Swiss Re Institute also cited how shared critical systems and concurrent risks, such as power, cooling, and fire protection failures, can drive multiple claims from a single event, and that large cloud infrastructure spending is expected to exceed $600 billion in 2026.