Data strategy, Data mart

Major Insurer Transforms Operations With Modernized Data Strategy and Actuarial Data Mart

For this major property and casualty insurance company, modernizing their data strategy was a critical part of their path to smoother, more efficient operations and faster, data-driven decisions. Wavicle’s expert data and analytics consultants helped the insurer develop an improved data strategy for robust and secure infrastructure across their technology stack that would deliver modern capabilities and reliable security.

Building a competitive advantage with cutting-edge data analytics

When this P&C insurer set their sights on becoming a market leader, they recognized the importance of a modern data analytics landscape. With up-to-date data infrastructure and cutting-edge technologies, they aimed to develop efficiencies and explore new capabilities that would allow them to serve their customers better and make faster, more accurate actuarial and business decisions than their competitors.

The company started their journey to modernization by investing in AWS and Snowflake but knew they needed an experienced partner to help revamp their data infrastructure, development practices, and overall strategy. This would help them build the holistic data capabilities required to modernize across the organization. It would also be more efficient and effective as a company-wide initiative versus separate function-based projects.

They saw a powerful opportunity to modernize their actuarial capabilities. Their actuarial department plays a pivotal role in creating and pricing customer policies by assessing potential risk and the probability of damages. To do so, they need easy access to a wide variety of data – including demographic information, health and lifestyle data, historical claims and event records, and more. Slow data pipelines, siloed and difficult-to-access data, and outdated reporting practices held their actuarial department back. Additionally, their legacy reporting platform at the time could not scale to meet their actuarial needs.

With fully modernized data analytics infrastructure, this insurer saw the potential for faster, more accurate actuarial modeling, smoother operations, and data-driven decision-making across their business.

Devising and deploying a comprehensive data strategy

First, Wavicle’s consultants executed a complete assessment of the insurer’s data, analytics, and business intelligence infrastructure, including their AWS environment; data integration (ETL) processes; Snowflake data storage; and existing reporting and dashboards. With a complete picture of the current state of the insurer’s data and analytics, Wavicle’s team put together a set of recommendations and guidance to enhance security, operations, and performance.

Then, the Wavicle team worked with stakeholders to ensure a smooth transition. This included work with the client’s in-house architect and leadership team to plan and prioritize implementations and user interviews with actuaries to execute immediate requirements for an actuarial data mart. In addition, the Wavicle team devised and worked with the insurer’s leadership to introduce a new holistic strategy for data-driven decisions, engaging all business and functional groups.

As part of the project, Wavicle’s data experts also wanted to ensure there was a path for continued scaling and modernization in the coming years. The team devised a success framework that could be used for repeatable data and analytics improvements in the future, including processes for everything from gathering requirements to delivery to stakeholder show-and-tell sessions, for the mutual insurer’s teams to retain and use.

Fast, accessible data for better business decisions

Wavicle made recommendations for robust and secure infrastructure across the insurance company’s entire technology stack to offer modern capabilities and protect the insurer’s customer information at every stage. The team also designed a comprehensive actuarial data mart, where actuaries can view and calculate premiums and loss indications with reduced effort and faster access to accurate data.

In addition, Wavicle’s consultants established a change deployment process, automated alerts, and data quality assurance processes to optimize operations and the insurer’s data environment. With expanded data management capabilities, resources, and governance processes, this insurance company now has a solid data-driven decision-making strategy for accurate performance analytics. All of these features work together to ensure the business has quality data that is accessible and accurate when needed, coupled with analytics and reports that drive the insight their team members need to make the right business decisions.

Implementing a new, future-proof data strategy was critical for the insurer, but Wavicle went a step further to ensure that continued updates and innovations would fit into this new, modern data environment. With a tested and repeatable development and delivery process, the company is set up to scale their data analytics projects efficiently and effectively into the future.