If P&C Insurance protects business-critical data with Microsoft 365 Backup

The leading insurance company in the Nordic and Baltic regions, If P&C serves more than four million customers with products that span life, home, and commercial coverage. With risk management at the heart of its business, If has long prioritized operational resilience, including protecting the digital tools and data employees use to serve customers every day.

The company has relied on Microsoft 365 for years to support 10,000 employees with tools like Microsoft SharePoint, Exchange, and Microsoft OneDrive. As more day-to-day work shifted to these platforms—collaborating on documents, managing projects, sharing internal information—expectations around data protection expanded as well. While built-in retention policies supported common recovery scenarios, they weren’t designed for long-term protection or high-impact events. “We’ve seen a sharp increase in cyberattacks here in Sweden,” says Patrik Carlstedt, Collaboration Platform Responsible at If P&C Insurance. “That shift raised cybersecurity to one of our top IT priorities.”

For an insurance company, recovery from cybercrime or other disruptions isn’t just an IT concern. It’s a business imperative. Maintaining fast, reliable access to critical data helps minimize downtime, maintain service levels, and support continuity across customer operations. “We are very good at protecting customer data,” says Carlstedt. “But we can't forget about the data our employees rely on, too.”

That mindset led the team to adopt Microsoft 365 Backup, a native solution that helped the company strengthen data resiliency without leaving the trusted Microsoft ecosystem.

Insuring business continuity with Microsoft 365 Backup 

When If’s IT team began exploring backup options, they approached the decision with the same rigor they apply to customer-facing platforms. Several third-party solutions offered similar functionality, but none could match the operational alignment and ease of implementation of Backup. “There was no long ramp-up,” says Carlstedt. “We already had the Microsoft foundation in place so we could get up and running with Backup.”

Choosing a Microsoft-native solution meant the team could bypass many of the internal hurdles that typically come with new technology—legal reviews, vendor assessments, and compliance checks. “We have quite restricted processes when it comes to allowing third-party vendors to store our data,” Carlstedt explains. “The Microsoft trust boundary gave us confidence that we were still operating within our own guardrails.”

Instead of triggering additional approval cycles, the team simply secured a formal go-ahead from IT leadership. Backup was activated within days—no retraining, no infrastructure changes, and no disruption to employees.

Protecting what matters

From the start, the team took a focused approach to applying Backup across Microsoft 365 services—safeguarding collaboration spaces, communications, and the files employees rely on every day. Coverage was aligned with internal priorities, balancing broad protection with attention to business-critical roles and content. “Backing up everything in SharePoint gave us peace of mind,” says Carlstedt.

The strategy allowed If to scale protection without overextending resources. And it’s already paying off. Recovery times have improved noticeably, especially in OneDrive, where user mistakes are among the most common restore scenarios. “Even if someone accidentally deletes everything in their OneDrive, we can easily get it back,” Carlstedt says. “That makes a real difference when it comes to productivity.”

Over time, Backup has become a foundational part of If’s IT environment—treated like any other critical license that supports business continuity. “This is one of those services we’ll keep using and building on,” Carlstedt says. “It’s simple, secure, and tightly integrated into how we already work.”

“It’s quite similar to having insurance,” he adds. “You hope you never need it, but you sleep better knowing it’s there.”

Helping shape what’s next for backup and recovery

Looking ahead, If continues to explore ways to refine its backup approach. One area of interest is the ability to automatically back up files tagged with Microsoft Purview sensitivity labels. “If I’ve marked a document as confidential, that’s a good signal that it should be backed up,” says Carlstedt. “Being able to connect those labels with backup would make the solution even more precise.”

That feedback has already reached Microsoft’s product team. “We take these kinds of insights seriously,” says Tehzeeb Versey-Patel, Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft. “Hearing directly from customers like If helps us prioritize features that reflect how organizations actually work.”

For Carlstedt, Backup is an evolving part of the company’s long-term strategy. “Microsoft 365 Backup isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it service,” he says. “We see it as something that will continue to develop, and we’re glad to help shape what comes next.”