Commercial insurers are expected to secure $US200 billion ($277.52 billion) in premium over the next four years as the global economy enters a capital expenditure “super-cycle”, according to Swiss Re.

The Swiss Re Institute’s latest Sigma report says surging investment in data centres and renewable energy infrastructure alone could generate the sum between this year and 2030.

Global energy investment is expected to reach $US3.4 trillion ($4.71 trillion) this year, with about $US2.2 trillion ($3.05 trillion) directed towards renewables, nuclear, grids, storage, low-emission fuels, efficiency and electrification.

The five largest US hyperscalers are expected to invest nearly $US800 billion ($1.11 trillion) in AI-related capital expenditure this year, while estimates for global data centre capex exceed $US1 trillion ($1.38 trillion).

This huge investment is creating larger, more concentrated risks, as assets cluster in the same locations and increasingly depend on shared infrastructure and networks.

Swiss Re identifies four structural drivers of risk accumulation: increasingly large individual assets; geographic clustering; supply chain dependencies; and shared physical and digital networks.

These factors can reinforce each other, meaning a single disruption can affect multiple policyholders, industries and lines of business simultaneously.

“We are seeing the digital economy become a real economy,” Swiss Re chief underwriting officer for property and casualty Gianfranco Lot said.

“AI needs data centres, power grids and increasingly complex infrastructure – and all of it needs insurance. That creates growth opportunities across multiple lines of business, but also significant risk concentrations.

“The deployment of capacity will depend on our ability to understand and manage those, and getting paid for the associated tail risk.”

Some AI data centre campuses can cost up to $US50 billion ($69.38 billion) to replace.

Swiss Re Institute says the principal constraint is not the availability of insurance capital but the ability to deploy it confidently against increasingly complex exposures.

Limited operating histories for these large infrastructure projects can make loss frequency and severity difficult to quantify.