People
Jochen Gottschalk
Partner & Managing Director
Munich
High costs and lengthy projects are currently associated with Digital ID Management at insurers and banks
Digital ID topics are by their nature cross-functional and require the involvement of many departments and systems within organizations. For example, the introduction of a Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) solution requires coordination with back-end systems (e.g., legacy data bases), front-end solutions (e.g., portals and apps), the sales organization, the marketing department, the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), as well as integration with IAM and PAM solutions.
However, current IT legacy systems are often not flexible enough to cater for this complexity nor enable integration with these various systems. In particular, the use of different legacy databases and inconsistent API standards, as well as non-coordinated release cycles between departments, lead to expensive and lengthy IT projects. A growing number of stakeholders within IT projects and a non-centralized ownership of existing systems lead to even higher project costs and durations. The resulting complex processes, for example due to manual efforts to complete customer processes (such as online registrations via postal letters), increase run costs even further.
Digital ID Management enables greater flexibility in the IT landscape, to react to changing customer demands more quickly and reduce costs drastically
An effective Digital ID Management can lower costs hugely as it is located between front-end and back-end – often referred to as the middle or integration layer. This way it enables the introduction and enforcement of a centralized governance process. In addition, APIs can be harmonized, legacy databases can be integrated, a non-dependency approach on release cycles can be achieved, and continuous deployment can be established. Furthermore, it offers the opportunity to move from on-premise systems to a cloud-based service-oriented architecture, paving the way to unprecedented scalability and security that many financial services companies have not been able to achieve. Overall, insurers and banks can become more flexible to react to user demands more quickly, digitalize manual processes, and decrease project durations and costs. What formerly was a lengthy and costly project to adjust customer facing processes with many integrations now becomes a matter of configuration and immediate deployment.
How to set up a Digital ID Management platform from a technology perspective
In order to establish Digital ID Management that can make the current system landscape more flexible and economical, the following three steps should be taken:
- Conduct a comprehensive IT analysis and discover whether you have Digital ID Management in place to cover the three main areas: IAM, PAM, CIAM – this is critical, as most of the time the three areas are handled separately, causing unnecessary complexity and process inconsistencies.
- Establish a strong project governance and enterprise architecture function that is consistently aligned with solution architects that work hands-on within ID Management projects. This will avoid the creation of technological debt and minimize complexity among systems.
- Decide whether you have a supporting technology stack already deployed or if you need to select a new / additional supplier that provides the platform, implementation, and maintenance for your Digital ID Management – selecting the right solution is key to avoid long projects and high run costs.
If you would like to assess your current Digital ID systems, your project governance, and enterprise architecture function, or select a supporting technology stack that is the foundation of effective Digital ID Management, we have the expertise to support you when it really matters.
The last article of this series will focus on how Digital ID Management ensures that information is protected, and cyber risks are reduced.
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