Drivers for change
Insurance company Ageas saw the potential for data and analytics to enhance its customer offering and market position in the markets it operates in. Given the nature of its federated businesses, most of its operating companies (OpCos) have the autonomy to create their own local solutions. However, this also means that ways of managing data are fragmented. It also constrains the ability to build analytics solutions at scale to offer personalised customer services, automate processes and utilise technologies, like artificial intelligence and machine learning.
- 40 million customers in 14 countries
- EUR 9 billion in revenue
- 3 business lines: life, non-life and accident & health
Georges Theys, Group Director of Analytics, was given the mandate to help Ageas release strategic value across OpCos initiatives by creating synergies on capabilities, approaches, and technologies at scale.
“There is a significant untapped potential for data and analytics solutions in the insurance sector,” says Georges Theys. “The key challenge for most analytics leaders is to decipher the code to unlock value from data at scale for a global, federated organisation. At Ageas, this is one of the biggest changes to our business to drive forward collaboration and next-gen thinking across our operating companies and PA has been a key partner for us in our journey.”
Creating a vision for next-gen data management
We worked together as a blended team of PA and Ageas colleagues, engaging its data leaders across Europe and Asia, to draft a compelling vision, understand user needs and define requirements. Our team combined data analytics and insurance experts, designers and developers and Microsoft Azure experts.
We created a framework comprising reusable building blocks, data user journeys, and piloted best of breed technologies able to operationalise the company’s next-gen vision. We facilitated two seminars in Europe and Asia, engaging 50+ global data leaders to uncover data solutions, form an enterprise data strategy, and share reusable analytics use cases.
Building an analytics cloud factory
Next, we made concepts real through practical applications of OpCo analytics initiatives in the cloud. For example, for Ageas’ car repair business, we leveraged Azure as a platform to configure an Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) pipeline using Data Factory, Databricks, Synapse Analytics and PowerBI. Testing data and analytics in a pilot environment enabled Ageas to demonstrate business value in the context of the insurance market.
“We applied a pragmatic agile product development and design thinking methodology to translate concepts into working MVP prototypes rapidly using the sandbox-as-a-service concept,” says Chike Eduputa, PA’s data analytics and digital expert. “This presented a step-change in ways of working for OpCos analytics teams.”
Providing best practice business application of analytics
Using our proven data and analytics methodology, we partnered with local OpCos to accelerate target projects to drive business value. We coached teams in analytics practices, meaning projects that took months previously to implement now take a matter of weeks to roll out. And by partnering analytics technology in data science and analytical capabilities including artificial intelligence and natural language processing, we’ve anabled Ageas to enhance the business value attributed to their projects.
