Modernizing Insurance Data Platforms to Improve Governance and Enrich Customer Experience

1. Summary

Pekin Insurance is one of the nation’s most successful insurance providers, with combined assets of $2 billion, more than 800 employees, 1,500 agencies, and 8,500 independent agents. Pekin Insurance is on the fast path to a full overhaul and modernization of their data, from the platform, to quality, to governance, to enabling consumers. They have built a 3-year strategy focusing on Data & Analytics and are wrapping up the final year, focused on a robust data layer with a data lake and a data warehouse, on target, on budget, and within scope.

Key Findings:

• The future for insurance is customer-centric and data is the key to meeting customer experience objectives.
• SAFe Agile project management works well for data projects.
• Agile requires patience and time for it to gel.
• Do not underestimate the time and cost (nor the long term value) of dealing with data quality and complexity.
• Data Lakes provide tremendous value as both data warehouse staging and data science work areas.
• Strong data governance is essential for getting the business’s input into data projects.
• A data maturity path, such as the one provided by William Mcknight and his team, is instructive in generating the next steps.

Special thanks to the major contributions to this report, and the true champions of the success of the project, Kim Wienzierl, Assistant Vice President/IT, Pekin Insurance; Toby Cihla, Divisional IT Director, Data, Pekin Insurance; and their teams.