Insuring Resiliency In Our World
With an extensive network spanning more than 20 countries, the Swiss Re Group is one of the world’s leading providers of reinsurance, insurance and other forms of insurance-based risk transfer, working to make the world more resilient. For the projects, students were tasked to look into the reinsurance opportunities for the energy, transportation infrastructure and public health insurance systems projects in the Asia Pacific region. Students were not limited to focus on existing client engagements, but encouraged to broaden the scope and identify private and governmental organisations that Swiss Re can approach for de-risking projects. This also includes identifying the constraints and the pain points on the private and public systems to establish whether there are some insurable risks, which would benefit from such partnerships. The deliverables to Swiss Re was a final presentation and report on the ecosystems of the selected Asia Pacific markets with a recommendation of key stakeholders and actors Swiss Re should approach.
Throughout the whole 12 weeks, students had the opportunity to submit weekly questions and present an interim presentation to the Swiss Re team to validate their understanding of the context of the project, their value proposition and move on to developing business solutions, stakeholder impact and proofing.
On the day of the final presentation, senior management and subject matter experts across the Swiss Re Group were invited to be the judges. They were very impressed with how tech-savvy and creative the young generation are. All teams presented valuable research and insights into different stakeholders and explained why Swiss Re should approach the stakeholders they have identified. Not only did the six SMU-X project teams have had the chance to learn new skills and explore different industries, the Swiss Re Group also claimed that their main takeaways from the projects were that it provided additional resources and insights for their departments, and getting fresh perspectives on the complex public sector, which has allowed them to find opportunities that they traditionally overlook.
“Swiss Re came to this project with enthusiasm and a level of openness that went beyond the norm. Senior Management both at the Asia Pacific and in Zurich gave their time generously to the student project teams in providing advice, guidance and patience in responding to the various queries throughout the tenure of the project timeframe. Re-insurance is a complex topic and the scope of coverage was outside Singapore which made this project even tougher to manage. Yet, both the student teams and Swiss Re rose to the challenge of bridging both the geographical and content complexities that enabled all six project teams to showcase an amazing array of information, analysis and recommendations for the infrastructure and healthcare sectors. Finally, due credit needs to be given to the Student Mentors – Anna Chieng & Girija Biyani who were selfless in giving their time to respond to students’ queries every week as well as organising the various meetings with Swiss Re associates. All these factors allowed me and my efficient teaching assistant to engage smoothly and seamlessly with both the Swiss Re and student project teams.” – John Antony, Teaching Instructor for the Business Capstone course