Percipience
Revolutionizes Insurance Data & Analytics

Two years after appearing on the Insurance CIO Outlook cover, Percipience has proven the value of the company’s next-gen insurance data and analytics platform, Data Magnifier. Co-founders Bruce F. Broussard, Jr. and Ajay Kelshiker started Percipience in 2020 to address common gaps forcing many insurance organizations into custom builds to meet data requirements.

Broussard and Kelshiker both have experience as insurance company CIOs and in leadership at top insurance consulting and software firms. This gives them a unique perspective on what makes a solution flexible enough to handle the varying needs of diverse organizations which can be implemented quickly and supported cost-effectively. Data Magnifier is that solution and sales of the platform have propelled Percipience to more than 400 percent revenue growth YOY.

“Data Magnifier unleashes the power of today’s insurance data for insurers across most P&C lines of business, including personal, commercial, and specialty, right out of the box,” said Broussard. “This will help insurance organizations survive today and thrive tomorrow.”

Avoiding Vendor Lock-In

Percipience recognized challenges with vendor lock-in, platform independence, and self-service enablement have impacted the adoption of many data platforms in insurance. By eliminating these challenges, Percipience delivers greater value than insurance clients can get from single vendor packages or with custom builds.

Most of Percipience’s competitors are core (policy, billing, and claims) administration system vendors with pre-integrated, “lite” data products that are not core system agnostic, and which are offered as part of a suite. This stresses insurers, as most have multiple core systems from different vendors and don’t want to be locked into a single core vendor. Percipience’s only focus is Data Magnifier, a platform reliant on industry standards for elevated ease of gathering and aggregating data from all available sources. Percipience’s forethought in building a core system agnostic solution is a distinct benefit to insurers increasingly prioritizing flexibility by avoiding vendor lock-in.

Platform Independence

The insurance industry’s mass market data software options are largely delivered on a single tech stack. In sharp contrast, Data Magnifier can be delivered on whichever of the world’s leading cloud platforms and toolsets, such as Snowflake, align best with the client’s preference or established internal architecture. This allows each client to take advantage of existing investments in tools, training, and experience, and, since no platform migration is needed, Data Magnifier can be implemented more quickly and cost-effectively than any other product. With insurance clients in production on Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud, Percipience leads the industry in developing and implementing a platform-independent analytics solution.

“Organizations invest significantly in data platforms and should prioritize preserving that investment over decades,” said Broussard. “The value of platform-independence is vastly underrated. The likelihood that any technology and data capabilities selected today will still be state-of-the-art in a decade is slim. Data Magnifier’s ability to migrate to new platforms futureproofs our clients’ investments as no other solution can.”

Every Customer is Unique

Insurance is a data-driven business, so it’s only natural for insurers to want the maximum possible control over whichever data platform is currently in use. The lack of control and insufficient self-service capabilities inherent to legacy data solutions has been an obstacle to adoption. In contrast, Percipience delivers all relevant source code and documentation with the subscription.

Recognizing that each company’s unique requirements cannot be supported by the base product, Data Magnifier’s client extension framework facilitates the implementation of bespoke requirements without creating obstacles that would prevent future Data Magnifier releases and enhancements. This approach has enabled nearly half of Percipience’s insurance clients to implement Data Magnifier with internal IT resources.

Build vs. Buy

Data Magnifier is a complete insurance data solution out of the box (OOTB) but has self-service capabilities that can be leveraged in the future as the company’s needs evolve. The combination of platform independence, provision of source code and documentation, and a proprietary client extension framework make Data Magnifier the right solution for insurance organizations regardless of build vs. buy. By leveraging Data Magnifier to reduce risk, cost, and development or implementation time, multiple Tier 1 and Tier 2 insurers previously unsuccessful in build attempts were in production within months. In fact, Percipience recently completed a Data Magnifier implementation with a change from Microsoft Azure to Google Cloud in only three weeks, on time and under budget.

“Data technology and sources are evolving at a rate that makes it very difficult for any individual insurer to justify the ongoing cost and effort to stay current,” said Kelshiker. “That’s our only focus at Percipience, so we provide clients with a cost-effective way to stay current while continuing to create a competitive advantage.”

As an example, Kelshiker cited Microsoft’s evolution to Fabric last spring. Porting an existing solution to Fabric would take an individual insurer a considerable amount of time and cost to research, plan, develop, test, and migrate. This isn’t a concern for platform-independent Data Magnifier customers. Data Magnifier’s versatility is evident from the wide variety of common challenges it has been deployed to solve.

“No two insurers have the same needs or look at their business the same way,” said Broussard. “The ability to quickly deploy Data Magnifier incrementally to solve tactical business challenges is a game changer in applying insurance analytics.”

Client Success Breeds Market Adoption

Data Magnifier has been deployed to solve many business challenges, including three scenarios that have been particularly valuable for Percipience clients:

1. Insurance organizations with multiple core administration systems, program business, and those trying to leverage advanced analytics derive enhanced value from Percipience’s platform. Data Magnifier’s ability to easily integrate with any data source enables rapid implementation, whether the data sources are internal or external, structured or unstructured. Data Magnifier has specific capabilities for program business, easily ingesting data from different data structures including spreadsheets.

2. Establishing a platform to support advanced analytics including generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) capabilities has been a significant challenge for many insurance organizations. These technologies require large amounts of data, and many insurers don’t have enterprise data consolidated and available from a single source. Several of Percipience’s clients have been driven to Data Magnifier to establish this enterprise data platform to take advantage of the immense and growing advanced analytics opportunities.

3. Delivery credibility is another significant competitive advantage for Percipience and Data Magnifier. While many competitors are challenged with limited references and a litany of failed implementations, Percipience has an immaculate delivery record and a full client list available for reference calls. The credibility gained through the company’s 100 percent client satisfaction level is key to Percipience’s continued growth, so meeting delivery commitments is one of the company’s highest priorities.

Data Magnifier Unleashes The Power Of Today’s Insurance Data For Insurers Across Most P&C Lines Of Business, Including Personal, Commercial, And Specialty, Right Out Of The Box.

From the Industry Mitsui

Sumitomo Marine Management – USA (MSMM), a division of MS&AD Insurance Group, is committed to an aggressive growth plan and identified the creation of an enterprise data platform (EDP) as central to that growth. Prashant Hinge, chief digital transformation officer at MSMM, has firsthand experience with Data Magnifier’s current capabilities, expansion opportunities, and delivery protocols since the Percipience flagship solution was chosen as MSMM’s new EDP.

“We have more than 25 unique applications with years of historical data to integrate with the EDP and we can’t take multiple years to establish the data platform and meet our growth objectives,” said Hinge. “Percipience was in production in under nine months with a solution that we can scale. We didn’t see any other solutions that came close to checking all the boxes Data Magnifier did.”

Looking Forward

Percipience invests in continuous development and knows the importance of new functionality to current and potential insurance customers. Recently, the incorporation of GenAI and ML capabilities into Data Magnifier has been important for existing and prospective clients.

“GenAI is the hottest topic in the industry,” said Karlyn Carnahan, head of the property and casualty insurance practice in North America for research firm, Celent. “Key to successful deployment is an investment in a holistic data strategy with access to all data across an insurer’s portfolio of solutions. An embedded data and analytics strategy with seamless integration into existing systems and workflows across applications broadens the value and impact of the types of analytics a carrier can deploy. The fast and effective implementation of advanced GenAI technology opens new possibilities for improving and optimizing insurance operations.”

“Whether it’s taking advantage of new technologies, data sources, or business processes, Percipience is committed to delivering a platform that gives our clients a sustained competitive advantage,” said Kelshiker.