Collibra helps SIGNAL IDUNA use data to improve customers’ lives

SIGNAL IDUNA is one of Germany’s top 10 insurance and financial services companies. It serves around 12 million customers with a portfolio of health, property, vehicle, business insurance, and associated products.

Whether it is home, car, health, or business insurance, SIGNAL IDUNA does not compete mainly on price, but rather the quality of service. It sees data as critical to modernizing and improving the way the business and its people operate so that it can continue delivering first-class services to customers.

“SIGNAL IDUNA is a traditional business with systems and processes that have grown over decades,” said Andreas Zolnowski, Center of Excellence Lead Data Office/ Governance at SIGNAL IDUNA. “But the main question is: are we ready for the future? What must we do to face future challenges, including more competition, demanding customers and complex regulations? How can we achieve better innovation, processes and customer services?”

The data SIGNAL IDUNA collects today is more comprehensive and detailed than ever. Home insurance involves data about property and people but also includes data about incidents and claims over time. The data is not about only one product or customer. It encompasses thousands of customers and reveals intelligence and opportunities to develop new products and services. For instance, drivers can use in-car Internet of Things devices to gather data about their careful driving to reduce premiums and trends to fine-tune insurance products.

As well as traditional systems and processes, data in SIGNAL IDUNA had become departmentalized and siloed. Getting access to data, ensuring quality, and determining ownership was challenging. “Definition and who owned the data was not always clear,” stated Zolnowski. “There was no central register, so searching and finding data was slow and complex. For data to work effectively, we need to know the quality. Getting data was taking a lot of time.”

SIGNAL IDUNA aimed to have everyone in the company using AI and data to drive decision-making by 2030. Therefore, addressing data management and data governance was essential.

SIGNAL IDUNA turned to Collibra because it differs from other data management solutions. “Collibra offers a product that is a data catalog and puts information in one place, but it also offers a data governance platform and a way to improve data processes,” explained Zolnowski. “Collibra is not a typical data vendor where data governance is a small part of a suite of products. It focuses on data governance and management and is great at connecting with many other solution vendors.”

SIGNAL IDUNA has implemented Collibra Data Intelligence Platform offering a data catalog, governance, quality, and security. Because Collibra is a SaaS solution, the setup was straightforward. “From a technical point of view, we sign the contract, and the next day, we have access to Collibra. Of course, we must connect our environment with Collibra, like single sign-on and databases, which is straightforward.”

SIGNAL IDUNA migrated Collibra to Google Cloud Platform when Google Cloud and SIGNAL IDUNA agreed to act as strategic partner in the German insurance sector. This gave the business access to data tools such as Google’s data warehouse, BigQuery, which integrates with Collibra.

Currently, SIGNAL IDUNA has a hybrid on-premises and cloud environment, but in a few years, it will shift to cloud only using mainly Google Cloud. “We are building up our infrastructure in Google to implement use cases and innovate analytics, and we have integrated Collibra into the Google Cloud environment for data governance,” explained Zolnowski. “The advantage of Collibra compared to other solutions is enabling data governance across both cloud and on-premises as we transition to a cloud-only environment.”

SIGNAL IDUNA uses Collibra connectors to integrate with Google Cloud and plans closer integration when the Collibra-Google Cloud partnership develops bidirectional communication connectors between Google Cloud’s Dataplex data catalog and the Collibra Data Catalog. This integration forms the basis for seamless work with data in different environments and thus supports the transformation of the data landscape to the cloud. SIGNAL IDUNA has also started trialing Collibra Data Lineage to improve data workflows. In 2025, the company plans to roll out Collibra Data Marketplace.