Swiss Re’s Beijing arm has partnered with WeBank, an online lender owned by Chinese investment comglomerate Tencent, to research the potential application of new artificial intelligence (AI) models in reinsurance, according to Shine. The parties signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to cooperate on federated learning, a new encrypted and distributed machine learning approach that enables training for joint machine learning on decentralised data. Swiss Re and WeBank will work together to explore how the technology can help address the efficiency challenges imposed by data silos, where only one group in an organisation can access a set of data. WeBank reported that its AI team has already created an industrial-level open-source technical framework and developed federated learning standards to promote interdisciplinary cooperation. Swiss Re believes that the partnership will build a foundation for new business supported by federated learning, and will encourage the reinsurance industry to adopt further new framework to improve their technological capabilities.