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My story

Fluent in the model, the P&L, and the reality.

I've always believed technology is at its best when it solves meaningful human problems. That belief has shaped every major decision in my career — from working in insurance and reinsurance, to building AI-powered products, to investing my time in understanding how the next generation of AI will reshape the way people work, make decisions, and create value.

I'm a senior product leader with nearly two decades of experience building enterprise software across insurance, reinsurance, geospatial analytics, catastrophe intelligence, cloud platforms, data products, and artificial intelligence. One passion has driven all of it: taking complex business problems, understanding the people behind them, and building products that genuinely improve how they work.

Working in P&C insurance and reinsurance exposed me to problems that can't be solved by software alone. Catastrophe events, claims management, underwriting decisions, and portfolio risk demand an understanding of business, data, human judgment, and customer experience in equal measure. Rather than being intimidated by that complexity, I found myself energized by it.

Over time I gravitated toward products that combine AI, large-scale data, analytics, geospatial intelligence, cloud platforms, and customer decision support — interests that have naturally evolved toward agentic AI and intelligent autonomous systems. Today I spend much of my time at the intersection of product management, artificial intelligence, and enterprise transformation.

Many people see insurance as a traditional industry. I see one of the world's largest decision-making systems — sitting at the intersection of uncertainty, finance, geography, weather, economics, regulation, customer behavior, and increasingly, AI. Helping organizations respond faster after catastrophes ultimately helps communities recover more quickly. That sense of purpose has always mattered to me.

One thing has stayed constant throughout: I love building — not just products, but systems, frameworks, processes, and ideas. Great products begin with understanding people, not technology. The rest is moving continuously between executive strategy and engineering execution until something ambiguous becomes something structured and valuable.

Open to senior AI product leadership roles, advisory engagements, and speaking.

Abhishek Mishra, portrait

Career evolution

Consulting → Delivery → Product → AI Leadership

2007–2017

Consulting & transformation (Cognizant)

Business and IT transformation, core modernization, and Center-of-Excellence leadership across the UK, Europe, ASEAN, Middle East, ANZ, US, and India.

2017–2020

Product incubation (Cognizant Property Insights)

Incubated a $6M-funded deep-learning catastrophe-claims startup; grew the team 4→25; shipped an AWS AI claims platform; onboarded 6 insurers in beta and converted 3 to paying.

2020–2022

Market leadership (Cognizant, Director)

Grew a $30M P&L by 40%; served the top 25 US P&C insurers; built partnerships with Duck Creek, Guidewire, and Insurity.

2022–present

AI product & growth (Swiss Re, VP)

Global AI claims platform for climate risk; 30+ person team; 20%+ expense reduction; $1M ARR in 18 months; owned the global P&L; co-invented a patented Rapid Damage Assessment Risk Score.

Areas of expertise

What I bring, with receipts

Artificial Intelligence

Patented Rapid Damage Assessment

Machine learning, deep learning, generative and agentic AI, computer vision, RAG, and LLM evaluation/governance — applied to regulated insurance, not slideware.

Experience: ≈9 years hands-on AI/ML in insurance

AWS Certified AI PractitionerMicrosoft Azure FundamentalsArtificial Intelligence for Product Certification
  • Co-invented a patented Rapid Damage Assessment Risk Score (Swiss Re, 2025)
  • Built deep-learning catastrophe claims on AWS (incubated startup)
  • Shipped agentic-AI onboarding cutting client time-to-market to ~2 weeks
  • Built FACIA, a multi-agent catastrophe-analytics prototype

Zero-to-One Product Management

$1M ARR in 18 months

Taking AI concepts from raw idea to shipped, adopted, monetized product — owning strategy, roadmap, pricing, GTM, and P&L.

Experience: ≈9 years in product leadership

AI Product Management Certification (Product Faculty)Artificial Intelligence for Product CertificationAINS
  • Built $1M ARR in 18 months for a new AI claims product (Swiss Re)
  • Incubated a $6M-funded startup; grew it 4→25 and 6 beta → 3 paying
  • Designed a scalable tiered pricing model
  • Shipped multiple 0→1 AI prototypes (claims, catastrophe, Workers-Comp)

Technology Transformation

$30M P&L grown 40%

Large-scale business and technology transformation — core platform modernization, operating models, and cloud/AI adoption across insurers and reinsurers.

Experience: 18+ years across transformation & technology

AINS (insurance domain)AWS Certified AI PractitionerMicrosoft Azure Fundamentals
  • Grew a $30M service-line P&L by 40% leading core transformation for top-25 P&C insurers
  • Led legacy modernization across the UK, Denmark, Hong Kong, Dubai, and Riyadh
  • Authored an AI adoption strategy and end-state architecture for a global reinsurer

Career philosophy

What I optimize for

I don't believe AI will replace human creativity — I believe it will amplify it. The future belongs to people who combine deep domain expertise with the ability to collaborate effectively with intelligent systems. Knowledge alone is becoming abundant; judgment, creativity, empathy, curiosity, and systems thinking are becoming more valuable. The most successful professionals won't simply know more — they'll learn faster, adapt faster, build faster, and continuously reinvent themselves.

How I work: Product management, to me, is connecting three very different worlds: understanding customers deeply, understanding technology realistically, and understanding business outcomes clearly. I enjoy speaking with customers as much as discussing system architecture with engineers, and long-term strategy as much as implementation detail. In practice that means a continuous loop: discovery → research → strategy → execution → measurement → iteration.

Current focus: Agentic AI and intelligent autonomous systems — LLMs, RAG, multi-agent orchestration, AI evaluation and observability, and voice agents — pressure-tested by building working prototypes with tools like Claude Code, Cursor, LangGraph, and n8n. Applied to AI-native insurance products and catastrophe/climate intelligence.

Leadership

How I lead

  • Build teams that own outcomes, not tickets.
  • Put controls and trust in from day one.
  • Keep humans on judgment and money.
  • Make the smallest change that ships value.
  • Lead across functions — sales, actuarial, engineering, compliance — because AI products live at those seams.

The record

Career timeline

  1. VP, Product Lead & Head of Growth — AI-driven Property & Claims Solutions

    Current

    Swiss Re · Jul 2022 – Present · New York, US

    • Global product vision and roadmap for an AI-driven claims platform for climate risk
    • Built and scaled a 30+ team of engineers, designers, and data scientists across the US and Europe
    • Delivered predictive claims insights that reduced clients' claims expenses by 20%+ and processing time by 30%
    • Guided architecture for AI/ML pipelines, agentic and RAG workflows, and Guidewire ClaimCenter integrations on Azure
    • Designed pricing models and regional GTM playbooks; built $1M ARR within 18 months and owned the global P&L
    • Co-inventor on Europe Patent No. 4409484 — Rapid Damage Assessment Risk Score (issued 2025)
  2. Director, P&C Products & Services Market Leader — Core Platform Transformation & Innovation

    Cognizant · May 2020 – Jul 2022 · Newington, CT

    • Led solution sales/delivery across the top 25 US P&C insurers
    • Partnerships with Duck Creek, Guidewire, Insurity
    • Grew a $30M service-line P&L by 40%; 5 new clients, 4 multi-year deals
  3. Sr Product Manager / Product Leader (Associate Director) — Cognizant Property Insights

    Cognizant · Oct 2017 – Apr 2020 · Hartford, CT

    • Incubated a $6M-funded deep-learning catastrophe-claims startup
    • Grew the team 4 → 25
    • Onboarded 6 insurers in beta; converted 3 to paying
  4. Senior Manager Consulting (Associate Director)

    Cognizant · Jul 2015 – Sep 2017 · Bangalore

    • Consulting sales/execution across ASEAN, Middle East, UK, Europe
  5. Manager Consulting (Senior Manager)

    Cognizant · Jul 2012 – Jun 2015 · Chennai / Bangalore

    • Led Policy Admin & Distribution CoEs; managed a team of 20
  6. Senior Consultant (Manager)

    Cognizant · Jun 2010 – Jun 2012 · US / Chennai

    • Underwriting & policy-admin transformation engagements
  7. Business Consultant

    Cognizant · Jul 2007 – May 2010 · Chennai

    • IT consulting and business requirements; US/UK pre-sales

Proof

Credentials & publications

Certifications

  • Product Management & Strategy — Wharton Executive Education (2025)
  • AI for Product Certification — Product School (2025)
  • Associate in Insurance (AINS) (2025)
  • Associate in Claims (AIC) — in progress
  • AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner & AI Practitioner (2025)
  • Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals & Azure AI Fundamentals (2025)
  • Cognizant Startup Accelerator Graduate (2018)

Patent & Publications

  • Rapid Damage Assessment Risk Score — Europe Patent No. 4409484 (issued 2025); pending in the US and Australia
  • Using Data to Get Ahead of the Storm — Swiss Re (2022)
  • Swiss Re Annual Report 2022 (contributor)
  • Right Touch Commercial Underwriting Playbook — Cognizant (2021)
  • Harnessing Social Media Data for Enhanced Underwriting Effectiveness (Asia Insurance Review)
  • Realizing the Potential of Social Media: A Strategy and Approach for Insurers
  • How Insurers Can Leverage Social and Messaging Apps to Enhance Digital Value
  • Innovation for Improving Catastrophe Claims Response

Speaking

  • Duck Creek Formation 2022 (Orlando) — “How Commercial Insurers are Transforming Underwriting with SaaS Platforms”

Education

  • MBA, Marketing — Xavier Institute of Management (2007)
  • B.Tech, Instrumentation & Electronics — College of Engineering & Technology (2005)

Beyond work

I'm a husband and a proud father, and some of my most meaningful moments happen away from a computer — watching my daughter discover the world, planning weekend adventures, and exploring new places with my family. I also enjoy music, gaming, traveling, and collecting unique items; I appreciate things that combine creativity with craftsmanship. Curiosity shouldn't stop at work — the same mindset that drives innovation makes everyday life richer.