Novarica Releases Master Data Management Report to Support Insurance Carriers Digital Transformation

BOSTON - Jan. 23, 2015 - PRLog -- With insurance carriers of all sizes and lines of business focusing on improving their digital and analytical capabilities to meet customer expectations, the importance of enterprise data has never been greater. To help insurers thrive in this new world, Novarica, a research and advisory firm focused on insurance technology strategy, today announced the release of its Master Data Management CIO checklist report.

“MDM is more than a technology,” explains Mitch Wein, Vice President of Research & Consulting at Novarica. “It is a program of work involving an assessment of business needs, a data sourcing strategy, a data cleansing strategy to address quality, an architecture and integration initiative, data documentation and classification, as well as an organizational evolution for data governance and ownership.  The goal is to create a single view of the master data which can then be referenced by all systems, reporting, and business processes,” says Wein.

MDM first became popular in the insurance industry when the web forced insurers to expose data collected in their policy administration systems.  This data was in conflict with each other, inconsistent, and often misleading.  The end result was low customer satisfaction.

Over the last 3-5 years data has once again become a key focus of the insurance industry.  Data is now seen as a key enabler of the insurance industry’s evolution into a fully digitized provider of risk services focused on customer, not product.

When data is collected from either internal or external sources, the CIO becomes responsible for its storage, management and use.  This becomes highly complex in today’s world since data is both structured and unstructured and is controlled by various legal and regulatory considerations, as well as internal security and risk policies.  Based on the direct experience of Novarica’s senior team and its Council members, the following best practices should be considered when initiating an MDM initiative.

•Create policies around data and how the data should be managed and controlled.

•Establish organizational structure for data.

•Link MDM architecture to business goals and objectives.

•Consider supplementing internal data in an MDM infrastructure with enriched data and external big data.

•Determine what system or process creates the official data of record.

•Determine the senior level project sponsor and who pays.

•Deploy multi-year MDM programs in an incremental fashion.

For a free preview of this report, visit http://www.novarica.com/master-data-management-a-cio-chec... or for more information, contact Paul Ptashnick at email or 617.342.8114


About Novarica

Novarica provides information, insights, and perspective on markets, operations, and technology to financial services and insurance executives. The company delivers its service through published research, retained advisory services, and project-based consulting. Novarica’s research includes market and trend analyses, best practices research, case studies, and independent analyses of insurance software vendors. Novarica draws its knowledge from the personal experience of its principals, the ongoing information gathering initiatives of dedicated research staff, and regular communication with insurer executives through informal networks and through the Novarica Insurance Technology Research Council, a moderated knowledge-sharing community of more than 350 senior IT executives representing more than 300 insurers. More information at www.novarica.com