Case Study: AXA Global P&C achieves scalable cloud-based natural disaster modeling with Microsoft Corporation

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

AXA Global P&C, the reinsurance arm of AXA Group in France, needed a better way to build highly detailed catastrophe models for floods and other natural disasters. The team of actuaries and scientists lacked the IT infrastructure to run massive simulations, so they turned to Microsoft Corporation’s Azure cloud platform, including Azure HPC Pack, Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Storage, and Azure Batch.

Microsoft Corporation helped AXA Global P&C design a scalable HPC solution that let the team run R-based simulations on demand through a web-based workflow. With Azure Batch, the company can automatically scale to thousands of cores, expand modeling to windstorms and earthquakes, and increase grid resolution from 25 meters to 5 meters, improving the accuracy of risk analysis and helping deliver better coverage to clients.

AXA Global P&C

Simon Blaquière

Reinsurance Actuarial Manager