This piece was developed in partnership with Optimus SBR and Valani Global.
For life insurers, the introduction of the Long Duration Targeted Improvement (LDTI) standard is often a catalyst for adoption of modern data management practices. However, compliance can’t be achieved without substantial alignment of supporting IT systems to match new accounting policies, data accessibility, and data analytics/reporting requirements. For many insurers, this is the time to question the investment in upgrading legacy point-to-point systems, using LDTI as the reason to consider an upgrade to a data fabric that captures all components of the requirement—allowing for alignment of the data flows for the end-to-end process.
Insurers must consider key implementation realities as they compare upgrading their point-to-point system or upgrading to a new data fabric environment.
Complexity of data integration - Data integration for most LDTI implementations is quite complex due to the significant footprint of policy, claims, financial, investments, and reinsurance data usually residing in a variety of source systems.
Approach to data integration – How data is integrated is a key consideration for the IT department because of its broader impact across the technology and data landscape. Those who combine the integration needs of LDTI with the integration needs of other business objectives are able to achieve economies of scale, leveraging the same integration strategy and platform.
Data connectivity and maturity - LDTI presents a catalyst opportunity for IT to move away from a legacy point-to-point approach and adopt a modern hub approach. This facilitates the data connectivity for LDTI and sets the foundation for data maturity advancement, enabling advance analytics outcomes that leverage the potential of artificial intelligence.
Total cost - When looking at the total cost of ownership, agility, maintainability, advancing data maturity, advancing analytics, and being cloud ready, there’s a clear advantage for a data hub strategy versus a point-to-point strategy.
Revisiting enterprise integration - Given the rich dataset required for LDTI, it’s a great opportunity to take a look at your enterprise integration strategy and progressively modernize it through the LDTI initiative.
While many insurers may challenge the cost/benefit of transitioning to newer data fabric as they seek to comply with the new standard, our experience is that building on a point-to-point strategy is just as or more expensive that implementing a new data mesh platform. Such upgrades also do not easily position the insurer to advance their overall data maturity/governance and to set the stage for capitalizing on the potential of advanced analytics.
With the compliance deadline fast approaching, insurers need to actively and quickly examine and execute their compliance plans. We have established deep expertise in building solutions that immediately solve regulation specific requirements while laying the foundation for solid enterprise data management practices.
We have established a data accelerator known as InsurFabric based on the Denodo platform that accelerates the path to LDTI compliance and advances an insurers data maturity for advanced analytics. The InsurFabric accelerator shortens the timeline of LDTI implementations with data connectivity, workflow processing, a calculation library, and reports aligned with the requirements of LDTI.
How BDO can help
BDO, Optimus, and Valani have come together to establish accelerators for the LDTI journey. Our accelerators do not only meet the compliance needs of LDTI, but also advance an insurer forward in the areas of financial transformation, operations modernization, and data innovation.
Talk to us today.
Daryl Senick, Partner, National Industry Leader, Insurance
