The old adage is that “Data is the lifeblood of the insurance industry.” However, for many insurance companies, data is like the red-headed stepchild. No one is willing to take care or have responsibility for it. In the past, insurance companies have created data governance programs, but these have often failed or underperformed due to either:

• Business executives and managers consider data to be an “IT issue.”
• The return on investment (ROI) for data governance isn’t clear.
• Linking governance activities to business value is difficult.
• Organization structures are fragmented with multiple data silos.

 

Fortunately, today, things are changing.   C-level executives recognize the need to manage data as a corporate asset. In fact,  you will see a Chief Data Officer (CDO) appearing in boardrooms of many organizations. The primary responsibility  of the CDO is to ensure that data will be managed as a shared asset to maximize business value and reduce risk.

 

 

To help achieve this objective, the CDO will create a team of data stewards who are go-to data experts serving at the point of contact for data definitions, usability, questions and access requests. A good data steward will focus on:

• Creating clear and unambiguous definitions of data
• Defining a range of acceptable values, such as data types and length
• Monitoring data quality and starting root cause investigation when problems arise.
• Understanding the usage of data in the business units.
• Reporting metrics and issues to the data governance council.

As insurance companies continue to become more data-driven, their success will ultimately hinge on the ability to maintain and use a coherent view of this data. Better data can drive insight and help insurers make better decisions. To learn more about on this subject download the white paper “SAS Data Governance Framework: A Blueprint for Success.”

Today, data governance is no longer an afterthought. With the emergence of Chief Data Officers, insurance companies are now treating data like the prodigal child.

I’m Stuart Rose, Global Insurance Marketing Director at SAS. For further discussions, connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter.