Building resilience, not just insuring it

Luxembourg likes to say it makes things possible. FM, the mutual insurer known for turning physics into practical risk reduction, has decided to make a lot happen in the small country: a European Science & Technology Centre, a growing research team and partnerships that directly plug into the country’s innovation engine. Ground broken in March 2025, the centre will anchor work on climate hazards, industrial technologies and cyber for companies across Europe.

“FM is a specialty company,” says Chief Science Officer Louis A. Gritzo. “We specialise in commercial and industrial properties. We’re an engineering-based, site-specific underwriter that uses science to inform our engineering and works with clients to reduce their risk.”

We’re an engineering-based, site-specific underwriter that uses science to inform our engineering and works with clients to reduce their risk.
Louis A. Gritzo, FM

In other words, FM’s researchers understand hazard and develop solutions and FM engineers assess sites, and provide risk reduction solutions. FM then insures the site for the remaining risk.

That model shaped the European location search. “Initially, I assumed that Luxembourg was just a formality on our shortlist – we expected to choose a larger country like France, Germany or the Netherlands,” Mr Gritzo admits. But a visit hosted by Luxinnovation, the national innovation agency, changed minds: “We were able to talk to key senior government officials and research decision makers” on day one, evidence of an ecosystem geared to collaboration and speed.

A space for real-scale experiments

The decision is now concrete. In March 2025, FM launched construction of a 25–26k m², purpose-built facility in Luxembourg City, expected to open in 2027. It will house labs for real-scale experiments, an FM Approvals testing space for products used across EMEA, training rooms, client immersion areas and the company’s European insurance operations, “an integrated facility” that brings science, engineering and client engagement under one roof.

People with different backgrounds see things differently, and that helps in a technical environment.
Louis A. Gritzo, FM

Research has already begun on temporary premises while recruitment ramps up. “We’re growing our Luxembourg-based talent pool to serve the globe,” Mr Gritzo says. Talent availability – validated both by FM’s assessments and attracting researchers from across Europe – was a deciding factor. “People with different backgrounds see things differently, and that helps in a technical environment.”

What will the team do? Mr Gritzo describes FM’s “three-legged stool”: 

• intelligence from what they see in the real world
• physics-based computational models
• lab and full-scale experiments to ground models in reality

In Luxembourg, that means testing automation and robotics systems to understand failure modes (including cyber-induced failures), advancing climate science tailored to European perils, and turning all of this into practical guidance and standards used on client sites.

Strategic partnerships

Partnerships are the accelerator. In June 2025, FM and the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) signed a strategic agreement to co-develop tools that help businesses anticipate climate- and cyber-driven disruptions, combining FM’s risk expertise with LIST strengths in digital twins (virtual models of real-world systems), Earth observation (satellite and sensing technologies to monitor the environment), artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity.

Early flagship projects are expected to include a digital-twin platform that integrates FM climate models to simulate cascading impacts (for example, how flooded roads can halt supply chains), as well as work on identifying cyber-attack pathways through complex industrial systems (analysing how hackers could access and disrupt interconnected operations).

Nothing drives risk reduction more effectively than seeing that risk in person and discovering how it can be prevented.
Louis A. Gritzo, FM

“Nothing drives risk reduction more effectively than seeing that risk in person and discovering how it can be prevented,” Mr Gritzo says. The new centre is designed for exactly that: clients will be able to observe experiments in Luxembourg and, via immersive links, watch large-scale tests happening simultaneously at FM’s other R&D facilities in Rhode Island, Massachusetts or Singapore.

Why now?

Two forces influenced the decision, says Mr Gritzo: rapid digitalisation and a shifting climate. “Technology is coming out very quickly, posing new risks and opportunities to reduce risk. And we realised that the risks of natural hazards are changing because the climate is changing.” Locating a research hub in Europe puts FM closer to EMEA clients and near a deep pool of scientific talent.

Luxembourg, for its part, sees the centre as aligned with national priorities in research, innovation and sustainable development, with government leaders highlighting its alignment with the country’s climate resilience, cybersecurity and AI priorities. Luxinnovation’s hands-on role and “getting us to the right people at the right time,” as Mr Gritzo puts it, helped FM spin up quickly after pandemic delays. “We’ve been described as a great engineering risk-reduction company that also happens to write insurance.”

In Luxembourg, that identity gets a European home and a bigger stage.