Swiss Re on AI: Reinventing Insurance Without Losing Its Risk DNA | Swiss Re | FF Virtual Arena #359

Pravina Ladva, Group Chief Digital and Technology Officer at Swiss Re, talks about how a 160-year-old reinsurer is using technology and AI to reinvent itself while staying true to its risk-management roots.

Ladva explains that Swiss Re is a leading global life, health, property and casualty reinsurer and insurer, headquartered in Zurich, working business-to-business with clients around the world. Her role spans strategy and execution across data, cybersecurity, infrastructure, application development and, increasingly, AI. But despite the big tech remit, she stresses that the real “magic” happens when expert teams globally use technology together to solve real-world problems for clients.

A major theme is bridging the traditional gap between “the business” and “the tech team”, describing success as being “bilingual”: technologists who can talk in business terms, and business colleagues who are comfortable with technology. She’s keen to avoid a them-and-us mindset, framing everyone as part of one business bringing different pieces of a jigsaw together. That mindset is becoming even more important as AI tools become more accessible across the organisation.

On AI, Ladva outlines a three-layered approach. First, Swiss Re rolled out basic productivity tools so everyone could get hands-on experience and lose some of the fear. Secondly, teams were encouraged to build targeted, practical use cases – for instance, a custom GPT to turn internal meeting notes into structured summaries. The next phase is more transformative: using agentic AI over the coming 18 months to rethink core insurance processes, especially around unstructured data. She highlights how AI can now extract information from messy, non-tabular documents so humans can focus on analysis instead of data wrangling.

Data and governance are foundational. Ladva explains that Swiss Re has spent around eight years building a robust, centralised data platform with embedded controls, quality indicators and jurisdiction-specific rules. Governance and security are treated as “by design and by default”, not an afterthought that blocks go-live at the last minute. That same mindset shapes how the firm balances its risk-averse heritage with the need to experiment: stage-gated investments, quick tests, fast failures and openly shared lessons via internal platforms.

Looking ahead, Swiss Re is most excited about AI’s ability to make a traditionally slow, complex industry faster, deeper in its insights and more attractive to new talent. She hopes more technologists and data experts will see insurance and reinsurance as a place where cutting-edge tools can have real, positive impact at global scale.

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