Clean data helps Kooperativa to detect fraud

Kooperativa is a universal insurance company that offers a full range of services and all standard types of insurance for citizens, small businesses and large enterprises on the Czech market. In 2005, the Czech Business Insurance Company also became part of the company. Kooperativa belongs to the Vienna Insurance Group (VIG), the leading insurance specialist in Austria and Central and Eastern Europe, comprising around 50 companies in 25 countries.

With the growing number of customers and insurance contracts of the insurance company and the related data volumes, Kooperativa’s various departments have become increasingly aware of the need for “clean data”. The insurance company’s Security Department felt the shortage of consolidated and unified data, which issued a tender and subsequently became the business owner of a pilot project for a data quality solution.  

During the tender process, Deloitte’s analysis and Adastra’s input made it clear that this was not just a data quality project but a comprehensive Master Data Management project. Kooperativa representatives therefore decided to implement a data mastering project.

Adastra and Deloitte first defined and introduced uniform concepts such as data cleansing, unification, mastering, reference data and master/golden record as part of the project. Then, Adastra built mastering and cleansing rules over the data based on sophisticated logic.

The project unifies five entities (person, address, vehicle, bank account, phone number) and draws data from internal insurance company systems and external databases used in the insurance industry for data enrichment.

Based on its knowledge of Kooperativa’s IT architecture and systems, Adastra designed the Czech technology solution Ataccama MDC for data mastering, which Kooperativa has started using. Two crucial aspects played a role in Kooperativa’s choice of tool:

• a favorable licensing system 
• availability of local support (communication in Czech and distance from the headquarters)  

The first to use unified data was the Security Department of the Kooperativa insurance company. The data enters the fraud management system, which identifies non-standard, potentially fraudulent behavior that is risky for the insurance company.  

The Kooperativa can now identify suspected fraudulent behavior of citizens and businesses even more efficiently and accurately. This ultimately leads to improving Kooperativa’s overall financial balance sheet, as it has significantly reduced the payment of unjustified insurance claims.