Reinsurance giant Swiss Re is honing the way it assesses life insurance risk by engaging IBM's artificial intelligence system, Watson - a move that could improve the group's Australian profit margins amid tough business conditions.  
Swiss Re became the first global reinsurer to use IBM Watson, a cognitive computer system that is built to answer questions in natural language and "learn" from large amounts of unstructured data.
Mark Senkevics, head of Swiss Re Australia and New Zealand, said Watson will tap the entire group's data and underwriting platforms and will provide more accurate data for the company to assess risk. 
"It will mean taking an enormous amount of medical information and feeding that into Watson's cognitive computing system ... with the intent that it augments an underwriter's decision," Mr Senkevics said about the deal which was revealed in   September. 
"It will do a whole lot of work and very quickly. There will be more accurate underwriting, and to a certain extent it probably removes some human emotion in terms of decision making too," he said. 
The deal comes amid tough business conditions in the reinsurance sector, which has been under pressure from an influx of new competitors and low investment yields. Life insurance has been particularly hard hit in Australia due to worsening claims and lawyers urging their clients to claim. 
Reinsurers have been scouring for new ways to boost their business amid increased mergers and acquisition activity, and Swiss Re's move may be seen as a way the company is banking on technology to improve their profit margins. 

Easing the process
Clients currently have to undergo a significant amount of risk assessment procedures and the process to obtain cover can be lengthy. Mr Senkevics said Watson is expected to ease the process and provide more accurate underwriting. 
"Watson will presumably accelerate it but it will also provide the underwriter with a much more informed platform to use," Mr Senkevics said. 
Named after IBM's first chief executive Thomas J. Watson, the system shot to prominence by trouncing human champions on TV quiz show, Jeopardy, but it is now in commercial use. 
Some of its clients include big four bank ANZ Banking Group, which signed a new $450 million deal in   September. Both ANZ and IBM are investing in an innovation lab, and the bank's wealth business has been using Watson in its division. 
???The American tech giant also counts Melbourne Deakin University as its first university client as part of its $1 billion bet on what it calls a "new era" of computing.
Mike Rhodin, IBM Watson's senior vice president said in   October that the company was continuously on the hunt for clients to "help us train Watson on new industries" and the Swiss Re deal opened up the technology to a new business sector. 
"Systems like cognitive computing can continuously read the ever growing amount of information while helping us connect the dots and making it easier to interpret that information in the right context," Swiss Re group chief operating officer Thomas Wellauer said.