Carriers Embracing Modern Data Strategies

Today I posted a Q&A with Bill Kenney, CIO of E&S lines carrier Kinsale Insurance, about his approach to building core systems at the startup. Not pictured was his thoughts on how important it is to build a strong data warehouse as part of any new implementation, so that you're better prepared to make further changes in the future quickly and efficiently.

Kinney told me about a conversion from mainframe to client server that he did while at Colony Insurance. "In the process we built a group of data marts, a data warehouse that aggregated all the transactional data out of the mainframe system," he explained. "Once we realized that the holy grail of the data reporting comes out of the warehouse, not the systems, we put a rigorous balancing system in place to make sure what was in the warehouses were dead on accurate. Everyone was looking in the warehouse and it doesn't matter what the warehouse was. That gives you lots of flexibility in converting systems."

It's similar to something Armed Forces Insurance CIO Drew Mazeitis told me about earlier this year. He recently completed a data warehouse so the carrier can realize more robust business intelligence capabilities. Mazeitis was extracting data from the mainframe anyway in anticipation of a policy administration project, so he took advantage of that to build the warehouse.

"Not only do I get all of my data off the mainframe and turn it off to save my lease and maintenance costs, I also get all my data on SQL server, which is where all my other data is," he said. "We also wanted to consolidate reporting across our organization so we have common numbers and terms."

As carriers move into the next generation of core systems, I anticipate we'll also see more attention paid to data, because effective warehousing provides a competitive advantage by allowing carriers to dig into their customers and enabling upgrades down the road.

Nathan Golia is senior editor of Insurance & Technology. He joined the publication in 2010 as associate editor and covers all aspects of the nexus between insurance and information technology, including mobility, distribution, core systems, customer interaction, and risk ... View Full Bio