Michael Szönyi

Flood Resilience Program Lead

Zurich Insurance

Michael Szönyi is member of executive staff in the Group’s Sustainability function with Zurich Insurance Company. He leads Zurich's award winning Flood Resilience Program, a multi-sector alliance with academia, humanitarian organizations and the private sector, aiming to enhance community flood resilience. The program, originally started in 2012, was recently extended to run in a second phase from 2018-2023.

With his natural hazards expertise, Mr. Szönyi is also responsible for advising the company and all alliance partners on risk insights and risk mitigation strategies as part of the program. A center piece is the implementation of the self-developed flood resilience measurement framework across currently 12 program countries with over 100 communities. In addition, Michael is leading the post-event review function PERC and manages the research partnerships.

Before joining the flood resilience program at its outset in 2012 and taking over as its leader in 2016, Mr. Szönyi previously led the Global Technical Center for Natural Hazards in Risk Engineering. He has 12 years of insurance industry experience, all with Zurich. He has significant expertise in property and natural hazards related risk assessments for commercial customers. He was nominated “Young Risk Management Achiever of the Year” in 2011. Mr. Szönyi has Master Degrees in Natural Hazards Management and in Geophysics, both from ETH Zurich.