The insurance industry is flying blind, because their data is too fragmented to see the full picture
Every insurer I speak to is facing versions of the same challenge: years of product expansion, acquisitions, system upgrades, siloed business units, and regulatory change have created a tangled ecosystem of customer, policy, claims, and third‑party data. Each system holds its own copy of the truth. None of them agree.
This creates blind spots that materially increase risk:
- Subsidiaries insured independently without visibility of the parent organisation. Underwriters believe they’re writing isolated risks. In reality, they’re adding exposure to the same corporate group without knowing it.
- Claimants, complainants, assureds and brokers treated as unrelated people or entities. The same individual can appear to be five different parties across five different systems.
- Aggregated risk becomes impossible to model accurately. Because relationships between entities aren’t visible, exposure reports are based on fragments, not reality.
These aren’t data problems. They’re risk problems. They directly affect capital allocation, reserving, underwriting discipline, and regulatory compliance.
Customer and party data has become a strategic risk, not a technology concern
The central argument is simple. Customer and party data are no longer operational assets. They are strategic determinants of performance. When an insurer cannot see the relationships between its customers, assureds, claimants, complainants and intermediaries, risk is misjudged, value is lost and transformation slows.
Most insurers recognise this intuitively. Few treat it with the urgency it requires. Instead, many continue to assume that modernisation, analytics or AI will work around the fragmentation. In practice, they simply expose it.
3 forces that make inaction a leadership issue
1. Rising complexity means relationships matter more than records
Insurance exposure now sits within layered organisational structures. Without a clear hierarchy, insurers cannot understand concentration risk or customer value. Fragmented data makes that hierarchy invisible.
2. Customer expectations demand clarity, not convenience
Customers expect to be known, regardless of which brand, business unit or broker they interact with. Fragmented records erode trust and slow service, damaging retention and experience.
3. AI programmes depend on the quality of the underlying customer, party and reference data
AI does not fix fragmentation. It amplifies it. Retrieval models, predictive engines and automated decisioning all rely on consistent, mastered records. Without them, AI is unreliable at best and risky at worst.
Challenging the belief that technology will solve the issue
Some insurers believe that upgrading core systems, consolidating platforms or migrating to cloud will automatically solve data fragmentation. It is understandable. Modern platforms promise integration, consistency, and transformation.
However, system replacement addresses where data lives, not how it aligns. Fragmentation is a structural issue that persists across migrations. Duplicates, conflicts, incomplete records and missing hierarchies move with the data unless they are actively resolved. System change can help, but it cannot replace the need for a governed, trusted, and unified customer and party view.
TL:DR; Leadership must treat data foundations as a strategic priority, not a technical one.
The insurers that succeed over the next decade will:
- prioritise relationship visibility
- stabilise customer and party data before scaling AI
- treat data as a strategic enabler of risk, experience and growth
Those who delay will continue making decisions without clarity, watch transformation stall and carry avoidable exposure into an increasingly complex market.
Now is the moment for leadership to act. Addressing customer and party data is not back‑office work, it’s one of the most valuable strategic interventions an insurer can make.
Ready to turn clarity into competitive advantage?
If this article resonated, the next step is simple: download The Insurance Data Foundation Playbook below. It's your practical, insurer‑focused guide that shows how to reduce risk, modernise your customer and party data, and build the foundations needed for AI‑ready operations.
It outlines the core drivers of modernisation, the real-world challenges insurers face, and the proven steps leading organisations are taking to fix fragmented data once and for all.
If you’re ready to speak to a data expert and make an actionable plan forwards, get in touch with our team here.
