Data Compliance Management in Insurance: Your Complete Guide in 2025

Updated January 31st, 2025

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Data compliance management in insurance ensures that sensitive customer and policyholder data is handled securely, ethically, and in alignment with industry-specific regulations. It also helps in building trust by demonstrating a commitment to responsible data management practices.
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This article will explore the role of data compliance management in insurance and how to implement it effectively.

Table of Contents #

  1. What is data compliance management in insurance?
  2. Why does effective data compliance management matter?
  3. Business benefits of data compliance management in insurance
  4. Who is responsible for data compliance in insurance?
  5. How to tackle data compliance management in insurance
  6. Data compliance management in insurance: Core capabilities
  7. Final thoughts
  8. Data compliance management in insurance: Related reads

What is data compliance management in insurance? #

Data compliance management in insurance refers to the systematic process of handling sensitive information—such as claims records, policyholder data, and financial details—according to industry-specific regulations like GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and IFRS 17.

This involves setting up policies, systems, and processes that protect data privacy while enabling insurers to operate efficiently and remain audit-ready.

Non-compliance can lead to hefty penalties, operational disruptions, and reputational damage. Beyond regulatory risks, compliance failures slow down claims processing, weaken customer trust, and impact business growth.

Why does effective data compliance management matter? #

“Data is always going to grow 2X every two years. That’s been the industry trend since the 1970s. As more data grows, there’s more metadata of that data. There’s never a good way of handling that metadata. And it rears its ugly head, just like every tech debt does.” - Gu Xie, Head of Data Engineering at Group 1001

As insurers handle ever-increasing volumes of sensitive data, managing metadata effectively becomes essential for trust, governance, and compliance. Metadata answers critical questions – How do I find X, Y, Z data? Where do I find this report? Where’s this data coming from? How do I get the underlying detail of that information?

Without structured metadata management, insurers face visibility gaps, inconsistent reporting, and compliance failures. Beyond financial penalties, poor compliance can also lead to customer churn and reputational damage.

Strong data compliance management in insurance safeguards against these risks. It leverages metadata to provide a clear understanding of data lineage, classification, access control, data quality checks, and more. This enables insurers to have access to trustworthy data – an insurer’s most valuable asset.

Also, read → What is active metadata? Your 101 guide.

Business benefits of data compliance management in insurance #

Effective data compliance management in insurance strengthens business operations, improves customer trust, and enhances financial performance. Let’s look at some of the biggest business benefits:

  • Reduced regulatory and legal risks: A well-structured compliance framework with secure data handling practices and transparent audit trails helps insurers meet regulatory requirements.
  • Faster and more accurate claims processing: Data compliance ensures that claims data is complete, accurate, and readily accessible, reducing delays and disputes – policyholder information is accurate, relevant, and up to date.
  • Cost savings: Strong compliance measures reduce redundant data storage, streamline processes, and cut costs associated with audits and regulatory fines.
  • Improved fraud detection and risk management: Effective compliance programs help insurers detect anomalies and fraudulent activities by maintaining clean, well-governed data. This ensures better risk assessment and minimizes financial losses due to fraud.
  • Stronger customer trust and better retention: Policyholders expect their personal and financial data to be handled securely. Insurers that demonstrate transparency and strong compliance practices earn customer trust, leading to higher retention rates and improved brand reputation.
  • Competitive advantage and market expansion: Compliant insurers are better positioned to expand into new markets, form strategic partnerships, and launch innovative products. Many regions require insurers to demonstrate strong data governance before granting operating licenses.

Who is responsible for data compliance in insurance? #

Data compliance management in insurance is a collective responsibility requiring seamless collaboration among various organizational roles, such as:

  • Compliance officers: They craft data policies, establish reporting protocols, and ensure regulatory adherence.
  • IT teams: Deploy secure data systems, implement firewalls, and monitor activity.
  • Data stewards and data governance teams: Validate data accuracy, set up and oversee the enforcement of governance policies, monitor data usage.
  • Legal and audit teams: Interpret regulations, oversee audits, and ensure compliance.

It’s important to note that this is a general list of roles and responsibilities.

Every organization structures roles differently—some combine responsibilities into one role, while others spread them across teams. Factors like company size, regulations, and data complexity play a big role. Plus, evolving compliance rules and tech advancements keep reshaping how these roles function.

How to tackle data compliance management in insurance #

Managing data compliance effectively requires a proactive approach. Insurers should focus on four key strategies:

  1. Understand the key data compliance regulations in insurance
  2. Understand your data estate and evaluate it for compliance gaps
  3. Establish a single source of truth for compliance requirements
  4. Leverage automation and AI for large-scale data compliance management

1. Understand the key data compliance regulations in insurance #


To manage data compliance effectively, knowing the relevant regulations is essential. Here’s a quick overview of some of the key regulations:

  • General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): GDPR applies to any company processing personal data of EU citizens. It requires secure storage, lawful data usage, and the right to data portability. GDPR violations can cost up to €20 million or 4% of annual turnover.
  • Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA): HIPAA governs the storage and sharing of health information in the US. It requires organizations to enforce role-based access to sensitive medical claim data.
  • California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA): CCPA is applicable to businesses operating in California. It requires organizations to grant consumers rights like access, deletion, and opt-out from data selling.
  • Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS): PCI DSS requires insurers processing payment transactions to implement strong encryption, network monitoring, and access controls to prevent fraud and breaches.

Besides the above, industry-specific laws that you should know about include the following:

  • International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS 17): IFRS 17 sets guidelines for financial reporting in the insurance sector, requiring insurers to maintain accurate, transparent records for policy liabilities and revenue recognition.
  • National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC): NAIC provides a model law to regulate insurance companies’ data handling practices, including guidelines for protecting policyholder data, cybersecurity, and incident reporting in the US. NAIC’s Insurance Data Security Model Law mandates strong security programs and breach notification requirements.
  • Financial Conduct Authority (FCA): FCA requires insurers to ensure data governance in financial compliance in the UK. The FCA also enforces data governance practices under the UK GDPR framework.
  • Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI): IRDAI protects policyholder data and mandates secure storage practices in India.

2. Understand your data estate and evaluate it for compliance gaps #


A compliance audit is the first step to identifying vulnerabilities. Insurers must:

  • Assess current data governance policies against regulatory requirements.
  • Identify gaps in access controls, data retention, and encryption.
  • Ensure that structured and unstructured data is properly classified.

3. Establish a single source of truth for compliance requirements #


A fragmented data landscape makes compliance monitoring difficult, increasing the risk of errors and regulatory breaches.

Establishing a single source of truth ensures all teams—compliance, IT, legal, and data governance—work with the same accurate and up-to-date compliance policies and data classifications.

Think of it as a unified data and metadata control plane that handles data ownership, tagging and classification, column-level lineage tracking, role-based access, 360o data profiles, and more.

4. Leverage automation for large-scale data compliance management #


Manual compliance management is inefficient and prone to errors. Automation and AI can help insurers maintain compliance at scale by:

  • Automatically identifying and tagging sensitive data to meet GDPR and CCPA obligations
  • Enforcing access controls and data masking in real-time for data security and regulatory compliance
  • Generating compliance reports and audit trails with minimal manual effort

Data compliance management in insurance: Core capabilities #

To establish a strong compliance framework, insurers must invest in the following core capabilities:

  • Active metadata management: Automatically capture, describe, manage, and sync all types of metadata (including custom metadata), making it easier to find, use, and govern all insurance data.
  • Automated cross-system, column-level data lineage mapping: Understanding how data moves through systems is crucial for auditability and regulatory reporting. Automated, cross-system data lineage helps identify compliance risks, track data flow, and ensure data accuracy in upstream and downstream systems.
  • Role-based access controls and identity management: Personalize access control based on user roles, personas, data domains, or projects to manage who can view, edit, or delete data.
  • Unified policy management and transparency center: Use a centralized compliance dashboard to monitor policy coverage and enforcement in real-time and identify policy breaches immediately.
  • Automated audit trails and reporting: Simplify the compliance reporting process with automated tools for risk assessment, aligned with insurance regulations like IFRS 17.
  • Data contracts: Establish clear agreements between data producers and consumers, outlining the expectations, responsibilities, and quality standards for data usage in an insurance firm.

How Porto automated data compliance management to drive a 40% efficiency gain #


Porto, a Brazilian banking and Insurance organization with 13 million customers, is required to ensure compliance with LGPD. LGPD is Brazil’s General Data Protection Law, a 65-article regulation defining the rights of subjects of personal data, and the conditions under which that personal data can be collected, processed, stored, and shared.

The team responsible for LGPD compliance of Porto’s vast data estate, containing upwards of 1 million assets, is a nimble five-member data governance team. This team spent a significant amount of time manually defining asset owners, enriching data assets, and securing sensitive data.

Porto conducts stringent internal audits to ensure LGPD compliance, and government regulators are permitted to audit organizations at their leisure. That’s why the onus is on Porto’s data governance team to make sure that their data is identified, secured, and masked.

Porto used Atlan’s intelligent automation to:

  • Automatically tag PII data
  • Bulk update data asset ownership – automatically assign the business domain or team responsible as the owner of each data asset
  • Automatically document data assets to provide context

Automating data compliance management has led to a 40% efficiency in terms of time and expensive operational tasks for everything related to governance.

“We have preset rules that look for patterns in the names and descriptions of the fields, and if those patterns are matched, we classify that as a potential PII field. This has saved us tons of hours.” - Danrlei Alves, Senior Data Governance Analyst at Porto

Final thoughts #

Effective data compliance management in insurance safeguards customer trust, enhances efficiency, and mitigates financial and regulatory risks. A proactive approach—integrating automation, a single source of truth, and strong governance—streamlines compliance while strengthening data security.

By prioritizing data compliance management, insurers will be better positioned to drive innovation, expand markets, and maintain a competitive edge in an increasingly digital and regulated industry.

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