Unlocking Data Silos with Customer Master Data and Master Data Management

Context

A leading insurance broker in France since 1992, Willis Towers Watson operates in more than 140 countries and employs over 45,000 people.

Key figures:

Challenges

How many financial institutions found themselves unprepared when implementing regulatory standards such as anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CTF)? Many marketing campaigns are still sent to off-target customers, even though institutions already hold the relevant information within their systems.

Data quality lies at the heart of performance for financial institutions and brokers—process reliability, customer knowledge, responsiveness, and decision-making relevance all depend on it. Unifying and leveraging this strategic, cross-functional data has become a critical challenge.

To address this, Willis Towers Watson engaged Talan in a project to progressively deploy Master Data Management (MDM) across its customer and third-party data, with a primary use case focused on Know Your Customer (KYC) compliance.

Mandated by European AML/CTF regulations, KYC processes are designed to certify and validate customer identities to prevent fraud and related risks. Currently handled mostly manually, these processes create a disproportionate workload given the volume of data that must be verified daily. By combining a customer data repository with MDM, Willis Towers Watson can proactively enhance data quality by verifying information and detecting inconsistencies upstream.

MDM ensures data uniqueness and traceability, enabling organizations like Willis Towers Watson to meet regulatory requirements and facilitate audits by authorities.

Methods and Solutions

Over a five-and-a-half-month period, Willis Towers Watson relied on Talan and its partner Informatica, leveraging three core components to deliver the project: MDM Hub, Data Quality tools, and a project accelerator—Customer 360.

Benefits

As a guarantor of data quality, Master Data Management serves as the single source of truth for customer data. It is fully embedded within the organization’s business processes.

• Increased flexibility and agility in responding to business needs
• Easier compliance with regulatory requirements (SOX, GDPR, KYC, etc.)
• Improved effectiveness of marketing campaigns, cross-selling, and enhanced customer experience
• A unified and centralized view of customer data
• Improved data quality, access, and sharing across all departments (duplicate control, data certification, formatting, etc.)
• Reduced costs (streamlined system interfaces, data reconciliation and reprocessing, improved visibility on risks and capital allocation)

Other references

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