Legal & General partners with NTT DATA

A bold project to develop data science skills across its workforce is enabling Legal & General to leverage data to encourage collaboration and create new products and services.

Wednesday, 14th October 2020 Posted 4 years ago in by Phil Alsop

Legal & General (L&G), the multinational financial services company, recently partnered with NTT DATA, a world leader in consulting and IT services, to help build its data science capabilities. L&G is looking to enhance and leverage its data to continue to improve delivery of products and services encompassing investment management, pensions, annuities, and life assurance it offers to its 13 million customers every day.

L&G appointed NTT DATA to engineer an approach that would make data science accessible and change the way L&G’s people think and work with data.

The result was the Data Science Launchpad. It included three primary workstreams:

The training workstream: A six-week bootcamp for L&G employees gave them insights into data science and was designed to help them understand how it could be used in their business units.
The prototyping workstream: This created and delivered data science prototypes to qualify business opportunities for data science. This is the first step in delivering value to the business.
The tools workstream: A project to build tools and practical knowledge to support the internal data science community.

The Data Science Launchpad culminated in a conference in early 2020 with 110 stakeholders from across L&G attending.

Peter Jackson, Director of Group Data Sciences at L&G, stated: “In recent years, the financial services market has opened up to digital disruptors and as a result, it’s undergoing huge change. We are injecting new ideas into the business and encouraging innovation.

“The challenge facing financial services is to leverage the value and insight in data. This was important in terms of data technology but also in terms of mind-set and data literacy. We want to turn L&G into a data-driven organisation that empowers people to think differently, and to change how things are done.”

Jackson continued: “With NTT DATA, I recognised that we are working with a company that knows its way around data, enabling us to deliver benefits quickly. We did not need to spend time upskilling NTT DATA people - they already know how to accelerate the use of Data Science, and they seamlessly integrated themselves into my team.

“Together we’ve run workshops and conferences to bring people together. Our last data science conference, in February 2020, brought more than 110 employees together, including senior management. The feedback has been incredible. It’s the start of a new data-driven era at L&G and the possibilities are exciting.”

Simon Williams, CEO at NTT DATA UK, said: “Our partnership with Legal & General is about being a catalyst for change. We worked closely with Peter and his team to help them create an environment that challenged internal perceptions of data and opened their eyes to the art of the possible.

“Together, we have created a positive environment that not just delivers innovative projects but empowers people to think differently and encourages them to create new, fantastic services for their customers.”