SCHWEIZERISCHE RUCKVERSICHERUNGS-GESELLSCHAFT AG

Their core work

Swiss Re is one of the world's largest reinsurance companies, providing risk transfer, risk financing, and insurance-linked capital market solutions globally. In H2020 projects, they contribute their deep expertise in risk modeling, resilience assessment, and insurance economics — bringing the perspective of how emerging technologies and infrastructure vulnerabilities translate into quantifiable risk. Their participation spans critical infrastructure protection, autonomous vehicle safety, and digital agriculture, always from the angle of understanding and pricing the risks involved.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Swiss Re's H2020 participation is concentrated in a narrow window (2016–2017 project starts), making it difficult to identify a strong temporal evolution. Their earliest project (SmartResilience, 2016) focused on critical infrastructure resilience, while their 2017 projects branched into automated driving and digital agriculture — suggesting a broadening from traditional infrastructure risk toward emerging technology risk domains. The shift toward automated driving and agricultural digitalization signals interest in insuring next-generation technologies.

Swiss Re appears to be exploring how reinsurance expertise applies to emerging tech domains like autonomous vehicles and digital agriculture, likely scouting future insurance product markets.

How they like to work

Swiss Re participates exclusively as a consortium partner, never as coordinator — consistent with a large corporate player contributing domain expertise rather than leading research. With 65 unique partners across just 3 projects, they operate in large-scale consortia (averaging ~22 partners per project), indicating comfort with complex multi-stakeholder environments. Their role is that of an industry end-user providing real-world risk and market perspective to research-driven projects.

Despite only 3 projects, Swiss Re has built connections with 65 unique partners across 18 countries, reflecting the large consortium sizes typical of security and transport pillar projects. Their network spans broadly across Europe with no single geographic concentration.

What sets them apart

Swiss Re is the only major global reinsurer with H2020 project participation in this dataset, making them a rare bridge between EU research and the global insurance/reinsurance industry. For consortium builders, they offer something few partners can: the ability to translate research outcomes into real-world risk products and market viability assessments. If your project needs an industry partner who understands how to price, insure, or finance the risks around a new technology, Swiss Re is a uniquely qualified choice.

Highlights from their portfolio

• L3Pilot
  Large-scale piloting of automated driving on European roads — Swiss Re's largest funded contribution (EUR 103,936), directly relevant to the emerging autonomous vehicle insurance market.
• SmartResilience
  Developing resilience indicators for smart critical infrastructures — aligns perfectly with Swiss Re's core business of assessing and pricing systemic risks.
• NADiRA
  Unusual topic for a reinsurer — nurturing Africa's digital agriculture revolution — signals Swiss Re's interest in emerging market agricultural risk products.