Parametric insurance gaining ground for data centre operational risks, panel says

By Rebecca Delaney Sept 24 (The Insurer) — The rapid data centre build-out is creating demand for insurance products that respond quickly to power, cooling and connectivity failures, with parametric cover seen as well placed to address growing uptime risks, panellists said on a webinar hosted by Parametric Insurer earlier this month. The panel discussed how parametric insurance can provide the speed and certainty needed to address operational and business interruption (BI) risks across the fast-growing data centre sector. James Nelson, Lockton's US data centres and digital infrastructure practice leader, said that as capital spending pours into the sector and facilities increase in size, clients’ top priority is speed of delivery and ensuring uptime. “Clients are concerned with getting those online as fast as they can. They're spending billions and billions and trillions of dollars to deploy this capital; they need to get that return on investment,” he said. Sharon Haran, chief commercial officer at Parametrix, said parametric coverage fit the business model and insurance needs of large data centres well, with many operators already implementing sophisticated risk management practi