The GVB Group, headquartered in Ittigen in the canton of Bern, consists of Gebäudeversicherung Bern (GVB) and its subsidiaries GVB Privatversicherungen AG, GVB Services AG and SafeT Swiss AG, is known for its expertise in all aspects of securing and insuring buildings. To drive digital transformation, the GVB Group relies on the Microsoft Cloud in Switzerland and the continuous development of its employees.
“Mission Statement 2030″ envisages that by 2030 we will be the obvious partner in the two areas of securing and insuring buildings,” says Thomas von Gunten, who is responsible for IT on the Executive Board. “To achieve this, we are focusing on both growth and balanced development in our three core areas of insurance, prevention and intervention.”
To accomplish this goal, the GVB Group is becoming more involved in ecosystems and taking advantage of the opportunities offered by digital transformation. “Based on our digital strategy, we are developing new customer-centric solutions, simplifying problems and automating processes and offerings,” says Thomas von Gunten. As examples of offerings already available, von Gunten cites smart claims processing and automated building valuation, as well as the soon-to-be-available customer portal.
As infrastructure for the digital transformation, the GVB Group uses Microsoft Azure from the Swiss data centers. In addition, Microsoft 365 including Teams is used. “We’ve had a cloud and data strategy since 2019,” confirms von Gunten, “which we’ve aligned with regulatory and data protection requirements.” In fact, according to von Gunten, the GVB Group not only has to comply with strict legal requirements. “Because of our subsidiaries, which operate independently in the market, we also have to meet the requirements of the financial supervisory authority FINMA.”
In addition to security and the protection of sensitive customer data, the IT expert, who has worked for GVB since 1993, considers the major advantages to be the agility and openness of cloud technology: “The cloud gives us access to a secure and state-of-the-art infrastructure that enables us to test and implement things quickly and flexibly. This agility, combined with the openness to easily collaborate with other partners in our ecosystems, gives us opportunities we never had before with the on-premise solution.” In addition to technology, von Gunten says that people are also key: “We specifically develop the know-how of our employees and thus ensure that they are familiar with modern technology. This is a basic requirement for the successful implementation of digital processes.”
