Data Governance for Insurance
The company is the Italian subsidiary of an international insurance and banking group operating in 14 countries, with a total revenue of $15 billion and a portfolio of 13 million clients, representing 20% of the international market. In Italy alone, the company boasts a turnover of €1.6 billion generated by over a thousand agents located nationwide. These agents actively promote Property and Life insurance packages and offer specialized consultancy in insurance, financial, and welfare sectors.
The Context
Operating in the insurance sector, the company possessed vast quantities of data, both sensitive information subject to strict national and international regulations as well as information used across multiple departments to develop insurance products offered to clients. To do so, the company needed to catalog all data reports and leverage them to gain full insight into each dataset’s provenance, ownership, responsible stakeholders, and ultimate use in the development of policies and insurance products for the public.
Over time, increasing data volume and stratification made it difficult to clearly identify data owners. The absence of defined management roles overlooking the maintenance and dissemination of information for each dataset, combined with ambiguity in stakeholder requirements delayed data retrieval and undermined data operability.
Without a clear map of information assets, the company struggled to trace the full lifecycle of a data point, from its origin to its usage, including the modifications it underwent over time and its links to other information. This lack of data lineage made every modification a potential cause of unpredictable downstream effects on reports, policies, and products.
Solutions
Having fully understood the context of data management within the company, we decided to outline the subsequent actions by adopting a bottom-up approach that prioritized decisive interventions in specific areas of concern, as indicated by the client, while ensuring the project was scalable enough to encompass broader areas of the company's Data Governance.
The first phase required rationalizing all existing information. We scanned all databases to determine where information resided and how processes worked, then assigned clear maintenance and update responsibilities to stakeholders. We also identified the information lineage with two additional goals: to trace each data point’s physical end-to-end journey, and thus its complete lifecycle, and to fully understand its logical function by identifying the ways in which it contributed to the construction of complex business concepts.
After analyzing the company's Data Governance needs, we partnered with a Microsoft technology provider experienced in system components to build and manage the Data Governance project on a completely cloud-based framework. This infrastructure included services such as active monitoring of system components (SMS) and application support (AMS).
To ensure the full success of the company’s objectives, we designed a pilot project that integrated input from both internal and external teams. An extensive awareness campaign on data governance was initiated across company departments involved in the project, highlighting the benefits of Data Governance and its positive effects on workflow and business productivity.
The results
Clear data ownership and responsibilities were assigned to stakeholders, ensuring that every piece of information had a designated custodian responsible for its maintenance and distribution in the company. This allowed each department to quickly locate data, understand its context and identify responsible stakeholders. Information-related processes were optimized for maximum efficiency.
Scanning metadata and reconstructing its physical lineage made it possible to associate a specific dataset with a specific business concept. Mapping the lifecycle of each piece of data, including its interconnections with different departments, provided a complex reference framework. The company can now harness this strategy to conduct detailed impact analyses that provide a holistic view of how decisions impact the entire information infrastructure.
The company embraced a shared data-driven culture thanks to the involvement of multiple teams and a strong internal awareness campaign. Key staff members now recognize the function and vital importance of Data Governance after having acquired tools and skills necessary to manage data responsibly within standardized and efficient workflows.