Insurers leading the way to GDPR

A recent article by Insurance Business Magazine revealed that UK insurers are leading the march towards GDPR (General Data Protection) compliance, which comes into force in on May 25^th.

New research by data specialist W8Data has found that, over the last six months, the attitude towards GDPR has changed from what was originally predominately negative, with more firms now saying that compliance isn’t as scary as they previously thought.

In an earlier interview, Elizabeth Denham, the UK’s information commissioner, who is in charge of data protection enforcement, said that she was frustrated by the amount of “scaremongering” around the potential impact for businesses.

“The GDPR is a step change for data protection,” she says. “It’s still an evolution, not a revolution”. She adds that for businesses and organisations already complying with existing data protection laws will already be a lot of the way there!

The study by W8Data also examined, how companies are prepared across Europe, and it revealed that UK insurance companies are more prepared than their counterparts.

Looking at the top 10 European countries by GDP, W8Data’s research revealed that only 29% of the British insurance industry is unprepared for the regulation taking effect in May. That puts the UK in the number one position in the league table, while Spanish insurers find themselves at the bottom with 73% of them not ready for GDPR.

“Due to a strong history in direct marketing insurers in the UK have long been aware of the power of customer data and therefore maybe this experience has made them face up to GDPR more quickly than their counterparts in other European countries,” commented W8Data managing director Will Anthes.

“But whatever the reason it is fantastic news that UK insurers are leading the march when it comes to compliance.”

Operations director at DASA – an underground services supplier to some of the UK’s leading insurers,  Andrew Greatorex commented:

“Our ongoing investment in technology, through the use of a highly bespoke online management programme – Metrix, puts us in an extremely strong position enabling us to embrace the challenges the implementation of GDPR protocols. We would echo the general trend highlighted in the above research insofar as what may have originally seemed quite daunting is in fact simply an evolution of a process which has (or should have) been ongoing for some time now.

“The need to protect the various data which forms the basis of a modern ‘remote worker’ business model, particularly in a response-based field such as ours, has been a priority for DASA in the development of our various cloud and IT-based systems. We are now confident that, working with our various partners, clients and members of our supply chain, we are future-proofed and ready to continue the ‘DASA way’ through 2018 and beyond.”