Separating, migrating and then integrating data from one organisation to another is complicated – add the challenges of volume of historic information and regulatory and operational considerations, the life insurance sector has a number of hurdles to overcome.
The life insurance sector has seen a significant number of mergers, acquisitions and consolidation due to big financial institutions divesting these businesses.
While the management of data during any merger and acquisition (M&A) activity needs to be treated carefully and sensitively, in the life insurance sector legacy technology systems, complexity of products, volume of data sets, importance of historic data and regulatory requirements makes the process even more challenging.
The financial and reputational cost of not doing it right is high.
Challenges
Understanding what data should be transferred, what data should stay, separating that data and migrating it to new systems during M&A activities is complex and organisations in this sector are often faced with multiple challenges.
- Timelines for transition are agreed during deal negotiations where the full data scope may not be known, combined with penalties that often apply where these timelines are not met.
- Target state platforms generally require significant data mapping from source to target. This is often complicated by the variety of products, differences between systems in calculating policy pricing and is exacerbated by availability of experienced resources in the legacy technologies that underpin most life insurance businesses.
- Single-view-of-customer strategies did not contemplate the need to segregate data where a business was sold. The data that has been comingled/combined needs to be separated before it can be transitioned to the new organisation.
- Data may have been captured decades ago and so data quality, completeness, accuracy uplifts are often required before being able to transition data to the target state.
- Regulatory requirements governing data has changed dramatically this, coupled with increased attention from regulators on handling of personal data, means the process must be carefully governed to avoid any breaches.
The implications of not getting the separation, mapping, migration and implementation of data right can be significant, yet life insurance organisations want and need to achieve scale in their business, and access new target markets for continued profitability and return on their investment.
The key to success in transferring large volumes of data from one life insurer to another lies in bringing together complementary capabilities, including actuary, transformation and change management that are supported by powerful technology that can move data into target systems effectively and in a risk managed way.
Finding the answer
KPMG’s Powered Data Separation and Migration capability enables our industry specialists to draw fragmented data from multiple technologies and systems, identify the data that is related to the products that need to be transitioned, map data correctly from source to target and validate the accuracy of data once transitioned, including complex policy pricing outcomes.
It provides a business-centric view of the data migration controls and reconciliations and presents them in a way that’s easy to consume and that builds business confidence.
KPMG takes an approach that is focused on the entire lifecycle of the data transition, all the way from pre-deal to optimisation of the information in its end state to allow for the best chance of success.
Good data is good business
Good quality data, and easy, timely access to it, is necessary for all organisations to succeed in today’s rapidly changing world. Data helps organisations analyse trends within given products, understand the margins and pricing strategies for potential new products or understand potential experience and losses that might be inherent in legacy products.
When executives and business leaders are presented with data-driven insights, they are able to move quickly to respond to market signals. By having the right data to inform key business decisions from a risk exposure and profitability perspective, future product portfolio, compliance and marketing, among others, management executives can capitalise on opportunities and execute on business strategies.
This process of transferring data is complicated, but it doesn’t have to be complex. KPMG’s deep industry insights, coupled with our Powered Data Separation & Migration capability can help extract, migrate and implement high volume, detailed and sensitive data sets with ease.
Find out more
| Sign up to receive insights on digital transformation – direct to your inbox. |
