Reimagine digital
Transforming data governance capabilities across Asia
Turning data challenges into opportunities to transform data functions and drive sharper customer insights
Client: A large general and life insurer in Asia with cross-border and global operations
Industry: Financial services, Insurance
Identifying the challenges
Enhancing data governance and capabilities has always been a focus for our client. At a group level, they recognised that there was a strong need for alignment and standardisation. To help our client advance their data agenda, our data professionals identified the roadblocks ahead which included:
- Minimal data standardisation across architecture (eg, different naming conventions)
- Existing gaps in data cleansing
- The need for central ownership of data central inventory of Personal Identifiable Information (P-II) to help
As our client planned to expand their business across Asia, this was the perfect setting to turn these challenges into an opportunity. What our client needed was a trusted data governance specialist who understood the insurance sector to help them develop, implement as well as align their data governance standards and processes at a group level.
Setting goals and objectives
After identifying the challenges, PwC worked with the client and set out these four clear-cut data objectives, aligned to their desired business outcomes:
- Establish a single, centralised metadata management repository to store and manage their business’s metadata (e.g. business glossary definitions, data quality profiling rules, data quality index) across all the departments and business units
- Achieve identification of end-to-end data lineage and assets across key systems by acquiring the ability to scan for technical metadata
- Achieve data standardisation, consistent data cleansing and regular data quality monitoring to facilitate data remediation
- Identify PII data across the data architecture landscape
How we helped
We helped our clients implement the building blocks needed - to remediate their data challenges and gradually transform their data functions across Asia. These building blocks included:
- A robust metadata change workflow that enables users to raise data-related tickets in a centralised tool set
- Clearly defined data standards and processes across the client’s data architecture
- Newly-focused efforts in data cleansing and data quality monitoring across six different dimensions and parameters
- A central inventory of P-II Data for critical customer data elements
- Enhanced single view of the customers with a complex rules engine to determine duplicated customers’ data
- Workforce training and upskilling modules to address long-term sustainability needs for the data functions
Impact and potential
By the end of the engagement, the client had remediated their data challenges and transformed their data functions at the group level across Asia. The impact of their improved data function and data-driven culture was immense. In encouraging data transparency and data trust through operationalised data governance tool sets for all staff, the speed and accuracy in supporting the crucial business functions improved. With a cleaner view of customer data, their customer engagement increased by 15% and their lead generation results were sharpened with improved customer contactability by 30% via email and 6% via mobile phone to drive repurchasing, cross-selling, up-selling and targeted marketing opportunities.
"Building trust in data with transparency and accuracy is imperative to driving any business, AI or digital agenda. We continue to help our clients on their data journey by providing them with a solid data foundation for the future."
