On Wednesday, Jan. 19, AAIS hosted a webinar with AAIS VP of Data Solutions Ruturaj Waghmode and BizDynamics SVP of Partnerships Neil Pravin Dias. They took a comprehensive look at what the power of data democratization means for insurance carriers, regulators, agents, and policyholders – and how to make it a reality.
Watch the replay in the video below:

To begin, Mr. Waghmode introduced a definition of data democratization as: “Everybody has access to data and there are no gatekeepers that create a bottleneck at the gateway to the data," from Bernard Marr, bestselling author of “Big Data in Practice.”

Mr. Pravin Dias then began his presentation explaining that data is critical to growing revenue and relationships, which ultimately impacts business. Access to this data is even more important, which leads to the democratization of data imperative.

When discussing revenue growth, he posed questions like:

• If you are a front line sales agent – can you arm them with additional context and insights for their prospect conversations?
• If you are a board member – can you easily consume market insights?
• If you are the distribution and strategy analytics team, how can you leverage insights?

On the topic of relationship growth, Mr. Pravin Dias looked at wildly different jobs including as a frontline customer service representative, chief customer officer, and customer service strategy and analytics team, and how using data in the right way can develop relationships.

Mr. Pravin Dias then looked at five distinct stages of democratized data within organizations:

• Siloed Data
• Data Pipelines
• Cloud Data Management
• Data Gateways with Connectors
• Connected Data

He finished his discussion with a chart emphasizing the importance of a ‘Connected Data & Analytics Core’ to the data democratization process. Ahead of audience questions, Mr. Waghmode closed by discussing openIDL, a project developed by AAIS and now part of The Linux Foundation. He explained that it is a solution to creating a more democratized data insurance ecosystem.