On Thursday, October 27th, I hosted the Aite-Novarica Data and Analytics Special Interest Group meeting along with my colleagues Martin Higgins, Senior Principal, and Stuart Rose, Strategic Advisor. Special Interest Group Meetings are exclusive opportunities for Aite-Novarica Group clients and Insurance Technology Research Council members to review recent trends and Aite-Novarica Group Insurance practice research, share knowledge, and learn from peer experiences.
During this meeting, we introduced an upcoming Aite-Novarica report, the Data and Analytics Maturity Model, and also had a discussion about data lakehouses.
Introducing the Data and Analytics Maturity Model
The Data and Analytics Maturity Model will follow the format of previous Aite-Novarica maturity model reports (see, for example, the Agile Maturity Model for Insurers, January 2020). Data maturity is assessed across seven dimensions and 21 subdimensions, and stages of maturity are divided into Traditional, Evolving, and Transforming.
Data maturity is technology agnostic. It addresses technology selection and modernization, processes, and human capital. It’s not just about having a data lakehouse—we’ve seen organizations with the latest and greatest technology still not meeting the needs of their business users. And conversely, we’ve encountered organizations with traditional data environments that excel at supporting evolving business needs. The key to achieving data maturity is to consider all these capabilities and balance them. Organizations don’t need to be Transforming in all capabilities—they should align their transformation with the business strategy.
One of our Special Interest Group attendees provided the following feedback on the model: “All the components of having strong data analytics capabilities are represented. It shows us how we are making progress over time and gives us something to bring back to our partners and C-suite to measure that across time.”
We look forward to sharing the full Data and Analytics Maturity Model report soon.
The Data Lakehouse
Our discussion then moved on to a discussion of the data lakehouse. Recent advances in technology, driven by cloud hosting and cloud economics, have enabled the data lakehouse to emerge as a practical solution to meeting insurers’ data and analytics needs.
A poll of the attendees at our Special Interest Group found that 42% of attendees’ organizations have a cloud-based lake, 17% have an on-premises lake, and 42% do not have a lake.
At Aite-Novarica, we are not seeing any new data lake developments on-premises. There is high penetration of cloud-based data lakes—and more recently lakehouses. Almost two-thirds of insurers have data lakes at their disposal, and we are seeing great investment in this area. For more information on the data lakehouse, see our Aite-Novarica Group report, The Data Lakehouse: How Past Data Architectures Produced a New Paradigm (July, 2022).
Concluding Thoughts
Data and analytics will become even more important to insurers and be key to competitive differentiation and advantage. The industry is moving very quickly, and it’s important for insurers to stay abreast of what is going on out there so they don’t fall behind, which requires leadership, funding, and skills. To ensure success, investments in data and analytics must be driven by business need and value.
For more information about future Aite-Novarica events, visit our Events page.
