Willis’ Haitsch: Insurance Industry Swiftly Adjusts to the Data Center Boom

The insurance market is “scaling along with the opportunity” presented by a massive boom in data centers to meet the power demands of artificial intelligence, said George Haitsch, North American tech, media, and telecommunication leader at broker Willis.

Speaking at RIMS RISKWORLD in Philadelphia, Haitsch told Insurance Journal the infrastructure AI needs for computational power has “driven an increase in the need for significantly enlarged data centers,” and the insurance industry is stepping up to meet the specialized risks associated with data centers—financing, managing, constructing, and operation.

‘We’ve introduced…a seamless insurance solution that takes you from construction through operational without any handovers,” he said. “If you think about a hyperscale campus with multiple locations all in one spot—as construction is finished, you’d have to transition from a construction-based policy to a corporate property or other policy. There’s a handoff and it could be different insurance companies.”

Haitsch said Willis, a WTW business, sought to “smooth that out” by creating a view of risk to take data centers from creation, managing risks such as inland marine during building to cyber once the campus is up and running. This is couple with a risk management framework to “identify the primary issues and how it can help them ensure that their organization is protecting the balance sheet, addressing operational concerns, environmental, climate, energy, etc.”

“It really is a checklist to think through in a comprehensive way all the issues that this sort of hyperscale project can create for an organization,” he said.

Related: Willis Launches Global Digital Infrastructure Group for Data Center Risks

The insurance industry tends to look at risks in silos unlike the multiyear, multi-coverage approach needed for data centers.

“Some of these massive locations—there could be 15 or 20 different buildings, and they’re all going live at different points. Within those buildings can be be different rooms that are going live at different points,” Haitsch explained. “From a risk professional standpoint, that is a lot of manage in terms of details if you’re actually pivoting between insurance solutions.”

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