Breaking Down Silos: Turning Disconnected Data into Actionable Risk Insights with RMIS

Hello, everyone. Welcome to our webinar on breaking down silos, turning disconnected data into actual risk insights with RMIS. Today’s program is being recorded, and a link to the recording will be sent out after the program. Questions will be answered at the end of the presentation, and you can submit those questions through the Q and A function on the Zoom toolbar. I’ll turn the call over to our moderator, Neil Scotcher, Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Welcome, everyone. Just a bit about myself. Neil Scotcher. I’m practice leader at Origami Risk. Been with Origami over ten years now. Worked in the insurance and technology sort of area for nearly thirty years now, but worked in technology for over thirty years. And now I’ve seen a lot of change in that time, I can tell you now. So I’ll just get Donna to also introduce herself from from Centrica. Hello, everybody. I’m Donna. I’m I’m from Centrica. I work in the insurable risk team. I haven’t been insurance for thirty years. I’ve been insurance for about twelve. So I don’t have a traditional insurance background. I actually, have a change management and, an operational background. So, I bring a slightly different perspective when when looking at insurance. I actually started my insurance journey when I joined Centrica and have have remained in the insurance team, carried out a a couple of couple of, roles within that team and recently joined the Centrica captive board. So that’s another string to my bow and another perspective that I’m I’m looking lens that I’m looking through when I look at how we use our risk system and how we manage our data. Perfect. No. I appreciate that. Yeah. We’ve we’ve we’ve known each other for for some time now. And and Donna is a great person to have on this call because of the challenges and and some of the areas that we we faced as organizations together. So with that said, in in so, Donna, could you share your initial assessments when you took over Centrica’s risk and captive program, outline some of the key challenges you aim to address? Yeah. Sure. So when I when I joined the the Centrica program, it was even more disjointed than it than it is today. We have three insurance functions. We have five businesses, and they all did their own thing. So you you had you you didn’t have a single place you could go to get any any piece of data. We do now only have one insurance function, which does makes things quite a bit simpler, and we’ve gradually built that that function out. But we do still have a number of businesses, and those businesses, are very distinct. They carry out very, different activities. And as typically happens in big operations, each of these businesses will have pretty much all of these functions that are that are on the screen at the moment. So when you’re looking at a business, you’re not just looking at a legal team. You’re looking at multiple legal teams. And I expect that’s an experience that that many on the call will will have on the webinar will have have seen themselves. We also have joint ventures, so we have third party commitments that we have to support as well. So all of that brings brings complexity, and all of that brings data in different places and in different systems. So one of the things that that we’ve really tried to do is have a centralized place where all of the the data is is being held, and using the data to do some of the work for us. So rather than it just be a place to to hold data, we’re actually getting the data to do some of those things. But, you know, the challenges will come as no surprise, and I’m sure this, you know, this this is the same sort of things that that my colleagues will be seeing is you’ve got multiple systems. If you’ve got multiple systems, you’ve got fragmented data. You know? Your data is inconsistent. How do you know? How can you trust that data if you can’t put it all into a single format? Every time we looked at a spreadsheet, it looked different to the last spreadsheet. How do you have an audit trail? How can you tell that the asset spreadsheet that you’re looking at actually, what did it look like last year? What does it look like this year? I’m having to do the manual comparisons to to try and analyze that data. The amount of time we were spending just doing some of those, what I would I like to term them BAU activities. Just the time we were spent doing those, we just haven’t got that capacity these days to to be able, you know, to be actually actually doing some of that. So that probably gives you a bit of a nutshell about where we were. And I think would think everybody is experiencing that today, and you’ve got the additional pressures today of cost management, AI, all of those extra pressures that are coming at you from externally as well to to try and manage some of that. Perfect. Yeah. We we we work with lots of companies that struggle in all of those areas as well. From a captive perspective, where do captives fit into this picture? Are you they typically integrated into the broader data strategy or operated separately as I know you work closely with the captives? We do. We do. So so cent so Centrica’s captive plays a part on across our insurance program. So, again, I’m sure this this you know, teaching people to suck eggs here is that we have a a large group program that covers all of our businesses. We have a captive that participates within that program in in certain areas. We have reinsurance arrangements. We have fronting arrangements. And trying to tie all of those together and trying to make sure that you can have that view over all of those requires a lot of data. So I would say, you know, from a from a captive perspective, from a a Centrica insurance perspective, we’re not short of data. It’s not about not having enough data. It’s really about how you use it how are you using that data? How are you managing that data? So, initially, when I first started working on the program, the captive had their own system, but the captive had two systems. So we have a captive manager. So they had their own system that they used as a captive manager. There was a claim system that they put some of their claims in, and then we have an in house claims team, and they had their own claim system as well. So straight away, that’s three systems just to manage one piece of data. You’re never gonna get them all to to have the same piece of information in there. They’re they’re always going to be slightly out of sync. So there’s a lot of activity just to try and bring those those bits together and to make sure that what the captive is seeing actually is the most up to date piece of information. There’s no single source of data when you’re working across multiple systems unless you’re building in VRIs, of course, which when I joined, they didn’t exist. I I remember that I remember you explaining that when we first met about those three systems. Yeah. And and I was trying to get my head around it as well. So, yeah, that was quite interesting. But but that that’s typical of of big corporates, I think, though, particularly when you’re a corporate that’s changing a lot. Yep. Because you you buy up companies who come with their own systems, and then you’ve gotta integrate those. And sometimes you’re better off not integrating them. So, yeah, it’s it’s not an unusual challenge, I think, to have either multiple systems or multiple versions of the same data sitting throughout your your business suite. And and our captive was no exception to that. Being able to communicate the right pieces of information to our captive in a timely manner was pretty manual. It was phone calls. It was emails. You know, the captive are running their own reconciliation against the data that they’re receiving from from Sentrica, And then they’re doing their own manipulation in their own systems. You’ve got duplication happening there. Yeah. It’s it’s a lot of manual activity, which doesn’t really add value when you step back and and look at what you’re trying to achieve. No. Absolutely. And and you also just hit the nail on the head. Companies don’t stay still, do they? Things change all the time. And when you have three, four, five systems that you’re always having to maintain with five or six big changes every year or or things moving around, It it it must be an absolute nightmare when that when that happens. So so from that point, I guess, from your point of view, the the lack of connect you know, the what was the impact in terms of your decision making for having three systems, all these disconnections, all of these things? What what what do you say that that was? So I I think for for us, be really clear about what it is you’re trying to achieve. So don’t don’t from from our perspective, we had three systems. Automatically, you would say, okay. We just have one system because does that not make your life easier? But from our perspective, the way we’ve looked at it is what are we actually trying to do here? It’s not about system, which probably sounds a bit strange when we’re talking on an origami webinar. But for us, it’s not about the system. It’s about what are you trying to do? What are you trying to deliver? What outcomes are you trying to achieve? And then how can a system support you to do that? If you try and start with your system, I think you will potentially build stuff that you you don’t necessarily is this not necessarily gonna add some value? So for us, it was really about looking at our processes and what are we doing, and then actually how can a system help support us to do that. So, you know, we we have three principles that we we think about whenever we look at any development in in in any system. Does it support us with governance, both internal and external? So, you know, is it regulatory governance? Is it our own corporate governance? Is it something we need to deliver to the market in thinking about the insurance act? Does it help us in in that that scenario? Does it give us greater visibility? And that’s not just for us. That’s also for our stakeholders. Are we giving them better visibility? So the captive is a really good example in in in that scenario. And is it is it helping us with efficiency? Is it saving us time? Is it saving us cost? If you’ve got three systems, you’re paying for three systems. Is it more cost effective to have one system? Is the benefit of doing the work to get the one system offset enough by by the by the cost savings? So whenever we do anything as any system, whether it’s origami or any other system, those are the three metrics that that we always look at. So I would say that was probably our driver, was really about our processes and what are we trying to deliver, what are we trying to do here, and, actually, then how can a system support us. And we did a we did a tender. We’ve been with Origami for eight years, I think, now. Yes. And, yeah, eight years. I know. And we we did we did tender, and we did look at a wide range of systems to to try and make sure that, actually, the one that we chose met our needs and was giving us the the things that that we wanted. And I can say it was a good decision. And that’s not just because I’m on an Opic Army webinar. I would I would say we’re we’re pleased with the decision that we make. No. Perfect. Yeah. And and to be completely honest, yeah, it’s it’s better hearing it from you than someone like me talking about systems and their impacts and what they do and things like that. It’s so much it brings so much more sort of gravity to that to that that conversation. I guess I guess moving on, though, how does the in terms of the the impact of sort of the leadership confidence across the functional or or cross functional trust, I guess that that drives that’s one of the decision makers is is the trust and the the confidence in your information. Is is that correct? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it’s I think as as I’ve already referenced, it’s not people don’t have enough data. People all of us will have loads of data. Is that clean data? Is that dirty data? Is that data actually supporting you, and are you using it to to do anything? So for us, being able to be confident in the data that we that we hold, and this takes you back to that governance piece, is key. It gives us credibility in the marketplace. It gives us credibility with our stakeholders. It gives us, you know, it gives us credibility when we’re making decisions. It’s it’s the data that helps us to drive our strategy. And some of the things now that we have, you know, it it’s not about just holding data in Origami. The way that we’re getting that data to connect and the way that data is now driving some of the insights has has been a game changer for us. We could we could have done it manually. You can build pivots, and you can get spreadsheets to talk to each other, but you’ve only gotta put one formula wrong in a spreadsheet, and you’ve broken everything. We have built governance with Origami support in the Origami system that has that prevents that. We have exception dashboards that enable us to pick up on things that have potentially would fall through the cracks. So things like, you know, the captive have made a payment, but claims team haven’t made a payment. We’ll see that instantly. That won’t we won’t wait until the end of the month, and we’ll do a reconciliation. That exists straight away. You know, there’s there’s all sorts of examples that, you know, that I could give you where where actually because we spent the time making sure we understood what we were trying to achieve when we put the data into Origami, now we have an asset register that not only has all of our assets, it has a full audit trail. You can see all the projects that are linked to any asset, so that’s all on the same record. You can see the claims that are linked to those assets. So anybody who has access to the Origami system can go in and say, well, I wanna look at this asset. Straight away, I can see it’s had three projects. They’ve cost x. This one completed. That one’s still ongoing and have had two claims. This is how much those claims costed. We would not have had that data previously to to con and that’s the connected piece, I think, for for me that that makes a difference. Claims records, we’ve got captive financials on the claims record. We’ve got policies attached to claims. If there’s, you know, reverse of it, the claim has an asset attached to it if it’s had if it’s been a claim on an asset. Again, having that connection between all of those different pieces of data is it’s done. It’s all done for you. You don’t have to do this manually. We’ve we’ve set it up so that it it runs on a lot of this automated. We’ve got policies on Origami where you’ve got purchase orders and invoices and who the insurer is. I mean, I could I could go on for ages. Just telling you about how we, you know, we’ve connected some of that within the Origami system and and how that’s supporting us to to make strategic decisions. Yeah. I think I think it’s probably not uncommon for people on the call really to to think think about probably their daily job of searching through emails or searching through documents or or searching through file shares on and all of these things to to just to find one piece of information. And and and I guess I guess moving on to sort of another point in in in that realization of of when you you you realize you needed a more centralized or connected approach to managing your risk information. Obviously, I’ve known you eight years now, and then there was there was that period where you were looking at systems and things like that. So, yeah, it’d be good to understand how you came to that that that decision and and what was the first steps towards breaking down those silos or or going down that route. Yeah. Yeah. So so I think probably the primary decision maker when when I first joined the the team, there was myself and my manager. There was there was two people to manage quite a big inch complex insurance program. So so for us, it was really about, okay. So what do what do we need to be delivering to our business, and what’s the best way we can go about delivering this? The systems that we have are doing the fit are they fit for purpose? They’re fit for purpose today, but they’re they are also causing us lots of manual pain. So for us, it was really about identifying I think as as I’ve said, those those pain points, identifying what it is you’re trying to achieve and what the expectations are of you. What does your business need from you? What does your customer base need from you? And then how can systems how can a system solution help you to deliver that? And we started small. So once we’d you know, we were quite clear on what we wanted from a system. We spent quite a bit of time as as a team understanding what it is we wanted from a risk system. And we did go out to tender. Think we went out to maybe six six other other competitors. And we we so because we knew what we wanted. When we picked the one that we’d picked, which was Origami, the next step was then, okay. Let’s start with the most important pieces of data that we have. So we started small. We started with claims, and we put the claims data into the system because that everybody needs that data live. That that’s gotta be instant. And then we moved on to, okay. Well, here’s another dataset that’s as probably as important, but is not linked to claims at that point, and that was the assets. So you’ve got two really big pieces of data that need lots of audit trail, lots of governance around them. And then I’ll I’ll be really truthful. We had to spend a bit of time cleaning that cleaning that data. Because as soon as we put it into origami, we realized through the exception mechanisms that we have in there that that data was not clean. There were bits missing. There were bits that didn’t make sense. So we then spent a bit of a a period just cleaning all of that data through. We probably would not have picked that up if we just had it on spreadsheets. There were there were things that we noticed that we we hadn’t even thought to look for because, you know, sometimes you need you need a system to identify those things for you. So so for us, it was really about, you know, build prioritizing what it is you want to achieve, what is it you’re trying to deliver, And make sure it’s it’s flexible enough enough to do that. And then think about actually what do you want your solution to look like look like. You know? What what does good look like for you? And then that would be different for everybody. And and what will good look like in the future? Because, one of the things that, we do really like about origami is it’s constantly developing. It is constant you know, you’re constantly rolling out new things, which is great for a business that’s that’s constantly evolving. We’re we’re quite iterative. We can’t have we don’t have a road map that says we’re going from a to b in five years’ time. It’s it’s not that defined. For us, it’s we think we know where we’re trying to get to. We now need to have a system that comes along the journey with us to get us to that point. So since then, you know, we’ve built policies in. We built a section in the claim form that is dedicated to the captive and enables the captive to see as soon as a claim goes on the system, the captive can see what their exposure is, whether they have an exposure, how much that exposure is, and they don’t have to do anything. It it it’s all populated in there. Yeah. That is super cool. Section. Yeah. That that is super cool. That is That’s been a game changer for the captive. We’ve had really, really good feedback from them, as far as that is concerned because that’s taken out an email, a conversation, another spreadsheet, another system, a reconciliation. It’s it’s removed all of that, from that from that activity. So they they can see that instantly as they add their payments because, obviously, you have this cycle of, you know, the cash flow where the captive will make a payment, the claims team will make a payment, the insurer will make a payment. As those payments are made, the captive’s numbers are adjusting constantly so they can constantly see where their exposure is sitting, how much they’ve got left to pay, and when the claim is closed. So they have full access to that. It’s a it’s a section in the system that’s built specifically for their use. Yeah. I think I think one of the things someone said to me many, many years, gonna resonate on every conversation I have, is that having a system that does that it’s not about saving time in a lot of the cases. It’s making your relationship more professional with the market that you work with. Because you’re not just all managing a spreadsheet. You don’t have your broker now managing a spreadsheet for you. You know, you’ve not got the captive managing a spreadsheet. All of these things, what you have now is you have proper discussions about what can make it different rather than, oh, is that right or is that wrong or or how have you got to that number, etcetera, etcetera, which which, like you just I think you said earlier, you know, builds on that credibility. It builds on all sorts of things that that go along with, like, making decisions for the business as a whole. That makes sense. Exactly. And and having and having the system do some of that validation for you and do some of that that that data governance for you. So I think governance is is really key when you’re building anything. It’s having the system do some of that for you, enables you to say, I’ve given you five spreadsheets this year. Every single one has been spot on. This is how I manage my process. This is how I have my controls in place. Do I need to give you five spreadsheets this year? Could I just give you one at the end of the year? Because I can trust my data. You can trust me. Do we need to have those those incremental? And we’ve built we have had that. We have agreement with, our insurer and our captive that we will not make declarations every time we do something. Every time we make a change, we don’t make a declaration on a on an asset. We will do it at the end of the year. Because what because they now have confidence that, actually, the data that we are managing and the way we are managing that data means when they get to see it, it will make sense. It will be accurate. They won’t have to come back to and say, I don’t understand what you’ve done there, which makes such a difference. Yeah. I didn’t even know that. So that’s There you go. That’s great. Good for me. We are we are con we’re constantly evolving, though. We’re con constantly testing what we can do with origami and how can it how can it support us. In fact, we were in your office yesterday looking at some some new developments. So, yeah, it’s it’s a constant evolve evolution for us, I would say. Well, the ground ground is shifting beneath us every single day, isn’t it? The companies, the insurances, the risks, everything’s moving, and then AI, all of that is is coming into play. So, yeah, it’s it’s a constant you’ve gotta work as a team. And I and I think when we started out, we looked at it as a partnership, how we partner together to be able to support each other. So, yeah, that’s good. I I didn’t know that, so I’ve now noted that. So just, I guess, we’re we’re we’re coming closer to the end. It’d be good to understand from you for, you know, for organizations still dealing with siloed systems, where should they start, and what’s one piece of advice you would give someone trying to turn their data into an actionable insights? I would I think my my advice would be be really clear about what you’re trying to achieve at the start. Don’t start with your solution. Just get you know, think about what what’s what’s the issue that you’re trying to solve would be where where I I would start. Define I would, you know, define what what what you think your end goal should be. So what does good look like for you? Not your solution, but what does good look like? You know, I want this data to be clean so I don’t have to make a declaration every month. See, that that that type of thing. I would say start small. If you if you can think about what’s coming and what you wanna be doing next with that data, then then do that. But we started small, and we’ve gradually built over time. So so and and, you know, you you can always look back and say, well, I might have done that differently. But touch wood, we’ve yet to find something that’s completely fallen over on the basis of what of what we’ve built. So, yeah, I would say, maybe just start with one piece of data that you know, probably the one that causes you you the most the most pain or the one that needs the governance. Have some have some clear reasons for why you’re doing what you’re doing. So we have governance visibility and efficiency. Feel free to steal those. But, yeah, have have some have some key some key decision points that you’re using. We don’t put everything in origami. I will I will be be completely honest about that. There are some data points we don’t put in origami because we we just don’t see the value in doing it. There you know, we’re not using that data for anything specific. It’s it’s data we capture once a year as part of renewal. So we we we don’t put it in there. So, yes, you don’t think about this as as, you know, I have a problem with my data. I think what what what you should be looking at it through the lens of is what do I want to do with my data? What, you know, what can my data do for me? We all have loads of it. Just what what do you want to do with it? And and, yeah, and just be brave. Go go for it. Just give it a go. Perfect. Yeah. I like that. No. I I I agree. Starting small is a really good thing because if there is anything if there’s a change that needs to be made, it doesn’t impact huge amount. So you can make small changes very, very quickly. You know, if you’re going in the wrong direction, it can be easily changed very, very very well. And I remember when we first met, and maybe I wasn’t a very good salesperson at the time, but I said sat down and I remember saying, it’s not about the data going in. It’s about what you’re trying to get out of it and what you’re trying to achieve, which is really, really important. You know, I’ve seen a lot of failed implementations of systems, and they all focus on data going into the system. It’s really about what’s about what’s gonna make a difference to you. You know, you have management reports. You have businesses relying on this information. How do you need that, and when do you need it to be more precise, you know, and in what formats, etcetera, etcetera? And then that drives how data flows through the system in in that in that respect. Exactly. Exactly. Yes. Start start with what you’re trying to deliver before you start thinking about what data is going into a system. That’s part of the solution. But be be clear on what it is you’re you’re trying to deliver. And we we wanted better management of our claims data. We wanted to drive efficiency. We started with our claims data. Yeah. Absolutely. And then I guess so how how did you identify which data really is truly valuable versus what is merely nice to have? Because that’s that’s quite a because you just mentioned there’s some data that is not used and things like that. But how how did you make that decision? So, again, that that comes back to our our three key principles as to what data we think we should be putting in the system and and what data, you know, deserves our attention. So so when we were looking at our asset data as as an example okay. So we have assets on a spreadsheet. We get sent assets from spreadsheets from various parts of the business. We don’t have a single place to have all of those unless we’re gonna manually pull them in. So, actually, having having an audit trail for the assets was the problem. We didn’t have an audit trail. We couldn’t track where that information had come from. So that that was the part of the reason that we put that in in Origami because now we have a full audit trail on every single asset. We have the emails attached to the asset records so we so we can see anything that’s happened as with regards to that asset. And we also use the values collection, within Origami for those when it comes to renewals. So our businesses are driving you know, they’re they’re self serving that as opposed to us pulling the data from them. They’re actually inputting the data. So I think I think, again, it’s it’s it goes back to that prince you know, what are you trying to achieve? What’s the piece of data that will help you achieve that goal? And does it meet your principles, whatever your your principles happen to be. Yeah. Perfect. And we’re we’re coming to a close now. We’re about Yeah. Two minutes. So really, really good discussion. I was gonna say if you’ve got any question if anybody has any questions, you know, submit them by the toolbar now. Or if not, if you want to, just send them over to us. We’ll we’ll send them over to Donna or myself, and we’re we’re happy to answer them. I guess, Audrey, how do you want to handle that? Yeah. We can go ahead. It looks like there we do have one question that came through, and that that person asked, Donna, what role does the data quality play in building your trust and reporting? So so I think this this comes back to the the governance piece and having good good governance around your data. So we do a lot of that using exception reports in in Origami. So if if you’re not familiar with Origami, you can build dashboards, and we have exception dashboards on there that will pull out particular bits of data based on on certain metrics. So it could be we have a claim, and it hasn’t had any activity on it for three months. Okay. That’s an exception. Somebody needs to go in and and have a look at that. Or it could be we have an asset record and the value there’s no value on that asset record. So, you know, why is there there no value on that asset record? So that would then be a prompt for somebody to to go in and and actually have a look at that. Having that having those exceptions cleared on a regular basis gives us confidence that the data that we are then reporting on is is as accurate as as we can get it. And we’ve taken out the middleman when it comes to moving, asset information into the system. So rather than us receiving a spreadsheet, us then putting that information in the system that comes directly from the business. But, again, we’ve got these checks and balances that are running constantly in the background to make sure that we’re not seeing any erroneous data in there. Hopefully, that answers the question. If it doesn’t, please get in touch, and I’ll I’m happy to have a further conversation. Perfect. Well, thank you. I guess we’re we’re at time now, aren’t we, Audrey? Yes. So we are, and it looks like that was our only question. So I just wanna thank you all for joining us today, especially Neil and Donna. Thank you for for speaking, and, thanks everyone for your participation. Like I said, we’ll send out the recording once it’s available, and have a wonderful day.