Quantum for Insurance: Catastrophe Models, Cyber Risk and Long-Lived Data

Insurance is emerging as one of the most strategically exposed sectors in the quantum-finance landscape. The issue is not that insurers are about to become early mass users of quantum computers. It is that the industry combines two characteristics that make quantum transition especially relevant: it stores highly sensitive long-lived data, and it depends on complex modelling systems to price, transfer and absorb risk. Life, health, pension, liability, cyber and catastrophe lines all rely on records, contracts, claims histories, actuarial assumptions and reinsurance documentation whose confidentiality and evidentiary value may need to survive for decades. This makes insurers directly exposed to post-quantum cryptographic risk, including harvest-now-decrypt-later threats, even before fault-tolerant quantum computing becomes commercially available.