SAS and Swiss Re partner to help insurers navigate risk

SAS, a global leader in data and AI, and leading global reinsurance provider Swiss Re have entered into a partnership designed to help insurers strengthen resilience through AI-driven risk intelligence and advanced actuarial decisioning.

As a member of the SAS Strategic Technology Partner Program, Swiss Re will combine its CatNet^® natural catastrophe risk intelligence with SAS^® Insurance Life Cycle Accelerator, enabling insurers to incorporate predictive hazard insights directly into underwriting, pricing and portfolio management workflows.

"Insurers cannot rely solely on historical loss data to understand risk," said Stu Bradley, Senior VP for Risk, Fraud and Compliance Solutions at SAS. "The combination of SAS' AI and actuarial modeling capabilities with Swiss Re's catastrophe intelligence will enable insurers to make faster, more transparent and more resilient underwriting and pricing decisions."

Secondary perils, primary risk

As climate-driven events increase in frequency and severity, insurers are facing mounting pressure from so-called "secondary perils" such as floods, hailstorms and wildfires. According to Swiss Re Institute - the research and thought leadership arm of Swiss Re - 99.9% of insured catastrophe losses in the United States in 2025 originated from secondary peril events, underscoring the growing importance of managing these risks.

The offering will provide insurers with:

• Powerful data integration. Users can view high-resolution CatNet natural catastrophe data directly within existing SAS workflows via secure APIs and geocoding. Hazard intelligence is directly integrated into actuarial and underwriting workflows - no manual data manipulation.
• Automated and advanced decisioning. Real-time model scoring using machine learning incorporates current hazard information and event notifications. Enriched decision intelligence is automated for pricing, rating and underwriting. Model scores are unified with business rules, and champion-challenger strategies are run within guardrails for profit-loss ratio, fairness and compliance.
• Portfolio risk steering. Insurers can better understand concentration risk, assess portfolio impacts, and perform "what-if" analyses across geographies and perils.
• Proven operational efficiencies. SAS and Swiss Re expect their combined solution to drive massive productivity gains, including a 95% increase in decisioning efficiency and a 50% efficiency boost in the modeling process.
• Bottom-line and volume growth: Underwriting teams will be able to review 40% more risks with the same manpower, driving both top- and bottom-line impact.
  
• Robust governance and auditability. Governed, explainable AI workflows support regulatory and operational transparency. Rather than fragmented spreadsheet logic, a unified, cloud-native approach ensures full lineage, visibility and audit control from exposure data to final rate deployment.

The combined capabilities are designed to help insurers improve operational efficiency while strengthening profitability and resilience in the face of rising catastrophe exposure.

"Secondary perils are not secondary in terms of their financial impact," said Ali Shahkarami, Head Risk Data Solutions Insurance at Swiss Re. "Insurers need the ability to understand how risk is evolving across portfolios and geographies in near-real time. Together, Swiss Re and SAS are enabling carriers to integrate catastrophe intelligence directly into underwriting and actuarial decision-making so they can better anticipate risk, close protection gaps and build more sustainable portfolios."

The partnership reflects a broader industry shift toward insurance operations that combine AI and advanced analytics, catastrophe intelligence and human expertise to support more agile decision making.

"The future of the insurance industry will be led by enterprises embracing the concept of 'new collar,'" said Franklin Manchester, Principal Global Insurance Advisor at SAS. "Insurance professionals collaborating with AI agents to bring agility to decision making will be the hallmark of leaders - and the bane of laggards - when the dust settles."

More about secondary perils and sustainable pricing

To go more in-depth about the challenges they're helping insurers solve, join SAS and Swiss Re (along with Definity) for the free webinar Sustainable Property Pricing for Today and Tomorrow in an Evolving Natural Catastrophe Landscape. Experts from all three companies will discuss the rise of secondary perils as driven by climate change; sustainable property pricing and risk selection; and building portfolio resilience for long-term growth.