Insurers Struggling with Data Governance as Importance of Analytics Grows
Weak executive sponsorship poses biggest challenge to data governance: joint report by Novarica and IDMA
Boston, MA (Oct. 29, 2019) – Carriers face various hurdles to achieve effective data governance, including weak executive sponsorship, lack of business unit support, and technology challenges. Data governance, however, is essential in efficiently using data to understand performance, generate insights, and remain in compliance with data privacy regulations. In its latest report, Data Governance: Current State, Objectives, and Challenges, research and advisory firm Novarica and nonprofit professional association Insurance Data Management Association (IDMA) present insights from a study of 61 carriers with various types of data organizations.
“A major challenge for many carriers is obtaining organizational support for their data governance initiatives,” said Eric Weisburg, Vice President of Research and Consulting at Novarica and co-author of the new report. “Measuring the performance of data governance objectives, publishing a scorecard, and taking a use-case-driven approach that correlates business value to data governance can be helpful in this regard.”
“Data governance will make or break an organization, and the insurance environment is no exception. Insurance companies must be quick to respond to trends and challenges in our industry if they wish to not only remain competitive but gain further competitive advantage,” said Farouk Yassine, Executive Director at IDMA and co-author of the report. “Creating a proactive data governance program will enable an organization to better comply with statutory regulations, increase operational efficiencies, improve their customer experience, and increase top line growth by establishing an infrastructure of understandable, consistent, reliable, and usable data.”
Key findings:
- Carriers prioritize structured internal policy and claims data for governance. Other internal data sources receive less governance, as do big data and third-party data.
- Weak executive sponsorship is the biggest challenge to data governance. Drivers of the data governance practice need executive support to operationalize governance effectively.
- The majority of data organizations do not formally measure ROI. Measurements of success in data governance are immature across the board.
A preview of the report is available online.
Summary
Data governance is emerging as a critical success factor for insurance organizations. Carriers rely on complete, accurate, and secure data to assess risks, predict losses, and understand their customers better. Increasing regulation and security concerns also dictate that carriers know where they store their sensitive information and that they secure access to comply with the regulatory environment.
This brief presents insights from a study of 61 carriers with various types of data organizations that Novarica conducted with the Insurance Data Management Association (IDMA).
Topics:
- Carriers prioritize structured internal policy and claims data for governance. Other internal data sources receive less governance, as do big data and third-party data.
- Weak executive sponsorship is the biggest challenge to data governance. Drivers of the data governance practice need executive support to operationalize governance effectively.
- The majority of data organizations do not formally measure ROI. Measurements of success in data governance are immature across the board.
Click here for the table of contents or to access the report.
About Insurance Data Management Association (IDMA)
Founded in 1983, the Insurance Data Management Association (IDMA) is an independent nonprofit professional association that serves individuals employed in any aspect of insurance data management. IDMA’s 4000+ members are engaged in enterprise information governance activities across all parts of the insurance industry. IDMA’s offerings include certification programs, educational training workshops, annual conference and local chapter meetings, quarterly publications and periodic whitepapers, webinars, and social media platforms discussions. For more information, visit www.idma.org.
About Novarica
Novarica helps more than 100 insurers make better decisions about technology projects and strategy through retained advisory services, published research, and strategy consulting. Its knowledge base covers trends, benchmarks, best practices, case studies, and vendor solutions. Leveraging the expertise of its senior team and more than 300 CIO Research Council members, Novarica provides clients with the ability to make faster, better, more informed decisions. Its consulting services focus on vendor selection, custom benchmarking, project checkpoints, and IT strategy. For more information, visit www.novarica.com.
Source: Novarica
Tags: analytics, data management, Novarica Read the original article at Insurance-Canada.ca