Case Study: AXA Global P&C achieves scalable, high-resolution catastrophe modeling with Microsoft Azure

Global insurance firm models complex natural disasters with cloud-based HPC

AXA Global P&C, the Paris-based reinsurance arm of AXA Group, faced the challenge of producing high-resolution catastrophe models (floods and other natural disasters) over large, densely populated territories. Their 15-person actuarial and scientific team needed to process tens of millions of topographic data points (about 20 million at a 25 m grid) but lacked the IT infrastructure and administration expertise to run the required high-performance computing (HPC) workloads.

AXA built an on-demand HPC solution on Microsoft Azure—using Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Storage, Microsoft HPC Pack and later Azure Batch—plus a web workflow that converts R scripts to JavaScript so actuaries can spin up clusters and run simulations easily. The solution scales to thousands of cores (up to ~3,000), enabled faster, more detailed modeling (moving from 25 m to 5 m resolution), expanded coverage to windstorms and earthquakes, and produced more accurate risk insights and insurance offerings for clients.

AXA Global P&C

Simon Blaquière

Reinsurance Actuarial Manager