New modern data platform keeps annuity org competitive

Challenge

Statistics show that in 2031, the U.S. population over the age of 65 will be around 75 million — almost double what it was in 2008. This national retirement services organization recognized that a generation of this size transitioning out of the workforce would cause two significant economic shifts. First, it would instigate a considerable transfer of wealth as balances switched from asset accumulation to asset withdrawal. Second, asset wealth will move to the next generation as wills are executed, and the upcoming generations have different needs, a greater digital focus, and increasing expectations for customer service and engagement.

The annuity organization knew that to better serve transitioning and emerging clients, they needed a more integrated approach to accessing and leveraging comprehensive data about their clients, products, and beneficiaries. However, they had several challenges blocking their goals.

First, their data assets were scattered across a disintegrated data warehouse, siloed business systems, and disparate reporting assets. They needed a partner to look at their entire data landscape, assess its current state, and create a strategic and actionable plan to meet their new business needs.

They were (and continue to be) a well-established, multi-billion dollar organization which isn't a challenge in and of itself. But they had numerous legacy systems and a highly fragmented data asset landscape already in place, and there were long-term managers who weren't ready for change.

Additional roadblocks included:

A lack of integrated architecture for data across the diverse systems landscape
Redundant sources of reporting and analytics data
Mistrust of their data resulting from a lack of data integrity and inaccuracies across different platforms
Challenges with data analytics due to difficulty accessing applicable integrated data

This company worked with Fusion for over a decade on several different initiatives, so when they needed a new modern data platform for financial services, they reached out to us.

Solution

After collaborating with the company leaders, we understood their goal — to better serve different client populations and prepare for changes in asset management — and how their current challenges were blocking their path forward. With that clarity, our team began a three-phased approach to meeting the objective.

Analysis

We began by assessing their data and analytics environment. This gave us a foundation for determining gaps and opportunities as well as identify and prioritize business needs and drivers.

Program strategy alignment

Our team created a data charter that included a full inventory of their strategic business and use cases, an outline of their objectives and program goals, and a list of the identified challenges and barriers to meeting them. We used this to build a cohesive strategy to realign their data management and analytics capabilities with their business objectives, including:

Prioritization of strategic business initiatives
Key milestone targets for program increments
Capability gaps to address

Maturity assessment and program roadmap

With the assessment and strategy in place, we then worked with our client to understand where they wanted to be on the data maturity scale. From there we could create an integrated, multi-year roadmap to address master data challenges, starting with the highest priority tasks.

With a clear strategy in place, our data experts designed and built a modern data platform for the financial service company. The new platform would support data science, management reporting, and executive dashboards with integrated data that was accurate and reliable.

Outcomes

With their new modern data platform, our client could now better understand, predict, and empower their updated client engagement strategies through the optimization of digital channels. They can also ensure the quality and accuracy of their data and access it in real-time.

In addition to better data access, they now have fewer reports and dashboards, and the ones they have are more valuable and agile, allowing the organization to get the data when they need it. Now, our client is ready to meet the needs of both their migrating and incoming clients as retirement numbers increase.