Arbol launches parametric cover for data centre construction moratoriums

Arbol has launched a parametric policy that pays out when a government moratorium halts or suspends data centre construction, the New York underwriter said in a statement on 20 October.

The Data Center Regulatory Moratorium Cover pays a set amount when a covered action takes effect and remains in force beyond a defined waiting period. It covers capital already committed to a project and the carrying costs that build while a site sits idle.

Arbol says no existing policy responds. Property and builders risk need physical damage, delay in start-up cover generally needs a physical loss, and political risk cover is built for sovereign exposures rather than a county board vote.

"A moratorium or construction hold can strand hundreds of millions in committed capital, and standard policies do not respond," said Sid Jha, founder and chief executive of Arbol.

The cover triggers on government action against data centre construction as a class, not site-specific permit refusals, Artemis reported. Arbol told Bloomberg it prices using local data such as water availability, grid capacity, power rates and a jurisdiction's history with data centres, and excludes places with an active moratorium.

Arbol cited 45 state-level measures across 36 US states and restrictions in 194 local jurisdictions as of August 2026. Data Center Watch counted at least 106 projects, worth about $198bn, blocked or delayed by local opposition in the first half of the year, according to Bloomberg.

Arbol pitches the cover at lenders as well as developers, saying it turns a regulatory exposure long treated as uninsurable into a budgeted cost. Robert Hartwig, director of the Risk and Uncertainty Management Center at the University of South Carolina, told Bloomberg it "could go a long way to calming the nerves of what seem to be increasingly jittery investors in the AI space", but that its novelty and the tailoring each policy needs would make it "difficult to roll out rapidly".

Arbol wrote about $225m of gross written premium last year and expects to double that in 2026, it told Bloomberg. The cover is available to developers through brokers.

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Sources

• Arbol press release, 20 October 2026
• Bloomberg via Claims Journal, 20 October 2026
• Artemis, 20 October 2026
• Business Insurance, 20 October 2026

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