Swiss Re’s big data challenge: the global sum of global supply chains

Swiss Re is going to take some big data - some very, very big data – and hack down on risks to corporate supply chains, its head of corporate solutions innovation & transformation Ashley Hirst has indicated.

If data is the key to insurance and resilience planning, supply chains are the ultimate in data challenges. Companies who dig into the full depth of their supply chains can be surprised to find thousands, often tens of thousands, of firms linked in.

The potential data sources show "an incredibly complicated supply chain" where disruptions happen "more and more" and increasingly prove "they are really big and really matter." And with every disruption, the supply chain reacts and changes.

Big data is both his solution and an enormous challenge.

"This is, I think, what we call ‘tough’," Hirst told journalists.

The data is "disorganised and dispersed," prepared to a different standard not only among companies, but even among departments inside the same firm. The data is also confidential and proprietary, impeding collaboration even if close-fisted data owners were willing to share.

Swiss Re is partnering with US data analytics firm Palantir for a platform to collect data from across a full swath of corporate clients and translate the data to a  Swiss Re proprietary model or standard.

And they can do it without ever "seeing" the data - a retention of anonymity which  Swiss Re will leverage to grant open-access to third party providers of insight and analysis.  "We are going to open up the back end to anyone who can offer risk insights." Everyone capable of identifying weak spots in supply chains or systemic problems in the bigger picture are invited to help companies plot better resilience and faster reactions.

"We think this is going to transform company ability to supply chains," Hirst said.

"Once upon a time, supply chains were about cost; today supply chains are about cost and risk,” he said. "In the next decade, if you manage supply chain on cost, you are going to get left behind on risk."

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