Explain how the alliance helps Swiss Re to advance digitally in the insurance industry, with its advantages spread over other streams of the business.

Swiss Re’s new Digital Market Center will draw on Microsoft’s next-generation Azure cloud technologies, internet of things and artificial intelligence capabilities. The first areas of application are planned to be connected vehicles and mobility, industrial manufacturing (“Industry 4.0”), and natural catastrophe resilience (Zurich, 2020). The Digital Market Center will also develop innovative cyber platforms to measure business risks in a digital environment and enable a new class of risk technology solutions.

Swiss Re’s Digital Market Center will offer insurers a broader understanding of risks and their ripple effects on society, governments and economies. For example, powered by Microsoft’s automotive data capabilities, Swiss Re will be able to develop a much deeper analysis of automotive risks such as a car’s safety performance when using the latest driving assistance technologies (Zurich, 2020). By providing data-driven insights from this type of data, Swiss Re can enable insurers to design innovative new motor insurance products, such as pay-as-you-drive covers.

Swiss Re’s work in this area will go beyond new product creation and provide broader risk insights for complex, interconnected systems. For example, risk managers can get a greater understanding of how the loss of a ship’s cargo may impact global supply chains, or how natural catastrophes will impact a government’s key infrastructure investments (Zurich, 2020). Based on these type of data insights, insurers can develop solutions that pro actively mitigate losses before they occur.

I think that the alliance helps Swiss Re to advance digitally in the insurance industry, with its advantages spread over other streams of the business. The main objective is to transform the methods of risks for organizations by developing digital markets. Thus it presents an opportunity for insurance company to increase the efficiency effectiveness of the core processes. Also, by leveraging the most advanced data processing and AI capabilities at scale. Finally both Swiss Re & Microsoft equally benefited and Swiss Re migrate to the Azure cloud.