Jonathan Saunders, chief data officer, Direct Line Group
Describe your career to date
I started my journey as a research scientist in the space of drug discovery. I wore a lab coat, safety specs and I was running a lot of experiments. The experiments produced phenomenal amounts of data. Drug discovery is a volume game – find an interaction that leads to illness and throw every compound on the planet at it to see if it stops or slows it down. I ended up spending more time writing computer programmes to process the data and extract signal from the noise. I then joined JP Morgan and used pretty much the same techniques to build pricing models for derivatives. From there I ran various technology departments for investment banks and then moved into running large scale transformation programmes.
Having a background in technology, data, change and transformation set me up well to take on the role of chief data officer for Direct Line Group. I’ve been doing the role for three years and it’s been challenging and fun in equal measure. I’m lucky to work for a company with an executive leadership team who truly understand and advocate the need to become even more data driven. Our purpose is to give peace of mind to our customers – the effective and responsible use of data is a vital ingredient.
What stage has your organisation reached on its data maturity journey?
Direct Line Group embarked on an ambitious data transformation several years ago. Thanks to our brilliant, collaborative colleagues all across DLG and to our data experts, we have made fantastic progress and the strategy is already embedded for our biggest business line, with more businesses and functions coming online all the time – our flywheel is spinning. We are well positioned to keep getting better and better at serving our customers through the effective and responsible use of data.
Tell us about the data and analytics resources you are responsible for
Across DLG, we have thousands of colleagues using data. The core of our data capability is in the Data Chapter, which has about 250 data analysts, data engineers and data scientists who spend their days developing our platforms, creating insight and building models – they are doing amazing things.
Our data strategy journey has been domain-driven, meaning that we have embedded the data, the people and the platforms into our core businesses. All Data Chapter members line into the chief data office, which helps us ensure that standards, guardrails and controls are well established throughout the organisation. This also helps us create strong communities of practice, so all data practitioners feel that they belong with their business unit but are also part of the data family. We mix home-based work with regular attendance in our various offices across the UK.
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