Ardcarne Life Assurance / BB-Demo – Demo
Callcompleted
Ardcarne Life Assurance · 2026-02-23 14:00
First demo for Ardcarne's Chief Data Officer, with the COO joining late. She wants one view of each broker firm and a comfortable CISO. Enterprise was scoped at an indicative £155k first-year total. Decision is pencilled for 30 Jun 2026.
What was said
What this says
Current to 13 Oct 26First demo for Ardcarne's Chief Data Officer, with the COO joining late. She wants one view of each broker firm and a comfortable CISO. Enterprise was scoped at an indicative £155k first-year total. Decision is pencilled for 30 Jun 2026.
What happened: Hannah Lowe showed a broker firm page, a cross-team question and the connectors view on Ardcarne's sample extract. Ronan Tierney joined late, took no decision and told Niamh Costello to coordinate the security review.
Customer view: Niamh wants one view of each broker firm and asked where the data lives, because the regulator and the CISO will ask. Under DORA she named the register entry, exit position, continuity and pre-signing assessment.
Commercial: Matteo Ricci scoped Enterprise and quoted £155k as the whole first-year figure with implementation, not an annual price. He promised a written split between implementation and subscription.
Watch: The CISO has not seen the demo and the review is still ahead. The decision date of 30 Jun 2026 was described as a plan, and the connector commitments depend on dates engineering has not yet agreed.
Themes
Current to 9 Oct 26Theme
Enterprise demo, DORA review
Importance
upsell
Sentiment
positive
Voice
champion
Who was there
BB-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
Current to 9 Oct 26- Hannah Lowe to send the architecture note and review checklist the day after the call.
- Matteo Ricci to send Ronan Tierney a one-page summary and the written split of the figure.
- Niamh Costello to bring the CISO and procurement together and name the owner of the connectors page.
Risks
Current to 9 Oct 26- The CISO has not yet seen the approach, and the security review must satisfy DORA outsourcing needs.
- The £155,000 figure could be misread as an annual price unless the split is set out clearly.
- Connector delivery dates are not yet agreed with engineering, so the order form commitment is open.
Opportunities
Current to 9 Oct 26- Enterprise tier is scoped for a company-wide, regulated buyer needing single sign-on.
- Starting with a handful of champions in distribution and customer service gives a route to wider adoption.
Transcript
Matteo Ricci NoneGood afternoon, Niamh. Can you hear me all right?
Niamh Costello NoneLoud and clear. Good afternoon, Matteo. Hannah, hello.
Hannah Lowe NoneHello both. Give me a moment, I'm just stopping another share that's still running.- Niamh Costello NoneTake your time. It's been one of those Mondays, back to back since the morning, so a pause is welcome.
- Matteo Ricci NoneThen I will keep my opening short. Let me restate where we are, so that nobody is surprised. Today is the demo. After it comes the security review with your CISO and procurement, and the date we have pencilled in for a decision is Tuesday 30 June 2026. That is a plan, not a promise, and I would rather say so now.
- Niamh Costello NoneThat matches my understanding. Can I give you the business outcome first, so Hannah shows the right things?
- Matteo Ricci NonePlease. That's the best use of the time.
- Niamh Costello NoneRight. Today distribution look at a broker firm one way and customer service look at it another way. Same firm, different record, different history. A broker rings in with a query about a commission statement and the person answering has no idea that distribution met them last week. What does good look like for the brokers? One view of each firm. Whoever picks up the phone or prepares for a visit sees the same thing.
- Hannah Lowe NoneThat's clear, thank you. So I'll ask my usual opening question: what do you most need to know from the next fifty minutes or so? Because I can show a lot, and I'd rather show what matters.
- Niamh Costello NoneThree things. Does it genuinely give us the single view. Where does the data live, because the regulator will ask and so will our CISO. And how much work is it for my team to keep it running. Let's not over-engineer it.
- Hannah Lowe NoneGood. The short answer is yes, no, and not much. The longer answer is what I'll walk through. Can you see my screen?
- Niamh Costello NoneI can. That's a broker firm page?
- Hannah Lowe NoneIt is. This is built from the sample extract your team sent us, so these are your broker firms, with the names and the contact details removed, not a made-up demo company. On the left you have the firm. In the middle, everything the brain has indexed about it: records from your CRM, the calls, the email threads, the helpdesk tickets. On the right, the summary the brain writes itself and which source each line came from.
- Niamh Costello NoneMm. Can I stop you on the right-hand side? Each line has a source?
- Hannah Lowe NoneEvery line. If I click this sentence about the open commission query, it opens the ticket it came from. That matters for you, because a person can check the answer rather than trust it. I'll put that in writing for your CISO as well, because it's a design choice, not a setting.
- Niamh Costello NoneThat will go down well. Go on.
- Hannah Lowe NoneNow the part I think your customer service leads will care about. I'm going to ask it a question in plain English. Which broker firms raised a complaint recently and have not been contacted by distribution since?
- Matteo Ricci NoneWhile that runs, Niamh, this is the question I hear most from distribution people in other insurers. Not the dashboard, the awkward cross-team question.
- Niamh Costello NoneIt is exactly that. We cannot answer it today without somebody spending an afternoon in two spreadsheets.
- Hannah Lowe NoneThere we are. A short list of firms, each with the complaint, the date of the last distribution contact, and the owner on the distribution side. And if I ask it to explain how it got there, you get the sources it used.
- Niamh Costello NoneSorry, one thing. This owner field. Where does it come from? Is that your system's opinion or ours?
- Hannah Lowe NoneYours. It's read from your CRM. The brain doesn't invent ownership, and where the CRM is blank it says so rather than guessing. To be precise, that's a thing to watch in the first weeks, because blank owners show you where your own data needs tidying.
- Niamh Costello NoneWhich is rather useful in itself, actually. Right.
- Matteo Ricci NoneHannah, perhaps now is the moment for the question about where it sits. It's the one your CISO will ask first, and I would rather you heard it explained properly than in a questionnaire.
- Hannah Lowe NoneYes. Let me change the view. This is the architecture. BB-Demo runs inside your own Snowflake account. The data is not copied to a BB-Demo platform that we operate somewhere else. The connectors read from your source systems into your Snowflake, and the brain queries it there. We operate the service, but the data stays in your estate, under your access controls.
- Niamh Costello NoneAnd by region? Our data cannot leave Ireland or the EU without a conversation I do not want to have.
- Hannah Lowe NoneIt follows where your Snowflake account is hosted. If it's an EU region, the data is in an EU region. I'll confirm the detail on what we operate from and where, in writing, and I'll check one or two points with my colleague Ewan before I say anything firm. I don't want to answer from memory on a control.
- Niamh Costello NoneGood. I would much rather that than a confident wrong answer. Vendors who tell me early, that's what I value.
- Matteo Ricci NoneThat's how we want to work with you. And what does your regulator need to see? I ask because the answer shapes what we put in the review pack.
- Niamh Costello NoneUnder DORA it's the outsourcing arrangements. A register entry, the exit position, how we would continue to operate if the supplier had a bad day, and evidence that we assessed it before signing. Ronan signs those contracts, so he will want the board risk in two sentences, not twenty pages.
- Matteo Ricci NoneUnderstood. Let me confirm that in writing afterwards, so we build the pack around those four things.
- Hannah Lowe NoneShall I carry on with the customer-service side? I've shown the distribution view, but your service people live in the tickets.
- Niamh Costello NonePlease.
- Hannah Lowe NoneSo here's the same broker firm as a service agent would see it. They open the firm, the brain shows the recent helpdesk tickets and the email thread underneath, and I can ask, what has this firm asked us about in the last few months, and is anything unresolved? It reads the tickets, the replies, and the notes from the calls, then gives a plain summary.
- Niamh Costello NoneThat, there. That's the thing. A person on the phone would normally scroll for ten minutes to find that.
- Hannah Lowe NoneAnd I'll be honest about the limit. The summary is only as good as what was written down. If a conversation happened in a corridor, the brain doesn't know it.
- Niamh Costello NoneNo, quite. Nobody can fix the corridor. Yeah.
- Matteo Ricci NoneNiamh, may I ask about the people who would use it? You mentioned distribution and customer service. Roughly how would you start, one team or both together?
- Niamh Costello NoneBoth, but with a small group each. I'd rather have a handful of champions in each team than switch on everyone and then answer a hundred how-do-I questions. The leads from both sides are on this invite, so they can tell you what they thought afterwards.
- Matteo Ricci NoneSensible. And that fits Enterprise, which is what we have scoped, because you are company-wide in intent and you need single sign-on and the security review support. I would rather you heard the shape from me now. The indicative figure we discussed is £155,000 in total, with the implementation included. It is the whole first-year figure, not an annual price, and I will set out the split in writing so that Ronan can see it clearly.
- Niamh Costello NoneThank you for saying it plainly. Ronan will ask. He'll also ask if it's for more than the first year.
- Matteo Ricci NoneWhich is why I'll separate the one-off from the subscription. I will not blur the two.
- Hannah Lowe NoneCan I show the connectors, then? Because that's where the plan becomes real. Here are the sources your team listed: your CRM, the call recorder, the helpdesk, and the shared document libraries in SharePoint. Each has a status and a refresh time. The nightly refresh should be complete before the working day starts, so the brain is looking at yesterday's close of business, not last month.
- Niamh Costello NoneAnd if a connector breaks? Someone changes a field in the CRM, as they do, and it goes quiet.
- Hannah Lowe NoneThen you'd see it here first. The number of records indexed stops moving, and the connector shows a warning. The short answer is we watch for that and so should your admins. The longer answer is that I'd want one of your people to own that page. A connector that fails silently is how a brain goes stale without anyone complaining.
- Niamh Costello NoneNoted. That's a name I'll have to find on my side.
- Matteo Ricci NoneRonan has just joined, I believe. Ronan, good afternoon.
Ronan Tierney NoneAfternoon, all. Sorry to arrive late. What decision is needed from me today?- Matteo Ricci NoneNone today, Ronan. Today is the demo. The decision comes later, after the security review. I wanted you to see what Niamh's team would be working with.
- Ronan Tierney NoneGood. Then I'll listen. Niamh, is it what you wanted?
- Niamh Costello NoneSo far, yes. It answers the broker question we have been circling for a year. My concern, and it's the right one, is the same as always. I need our CISO comfortable, and I need delivery without drama.
- Ronan Tierney NoneIs our CISO content with the approach so far?
- Niamh Costello NoneHe has not seen it yet. He will see the architecture and the questionnaire answers, not the demo. That is what the review is for.
- Hannah Lowe NoneAnd if it helps, Ronan, the review support is part of the Enterprise implementation. I'll answer the questionnaire myself, I'll have the answers checked, and where I'm unsure I will say so rather than guess. You'll have it right first time, or I will tell you what is still open.
- Ronan Tierney NoneWhat's the board risk, if we go ahead?
- Matteo Ricci NoneI would put it in two parts. The first is the dependency: you would have a supplier operating a service inside your data estate, so it belongs on the register and you need an exit position. The second is delivery: the commitment on the connectors, and we will state that in the order form with the dates engineering has agreed, and not before. I will not give you a date today that I cannot stand behind.
- Ronan Tierney NoneThat's honest. Let's proceed with the review, then. Niamh, you coordinate. Matteo, send me the short version.
- Matteo Ricci NoneOf course. A page, no more.
- Ronan Tierney NoneGood. I'll leave you to it. Thank you, all.
- Niamh Costello NoneThanks, Ronan. Right, he's gone, so quickly, before the end. Hannah, who from my side needs to be in the review, and what do they have to prepare?
- Hannah Lowe NoneYour CISO, someone from procurement, and whoever owns your outsourcing register. I'll send the architecture diagram and a list of what I'll need from you: the systems in scope, who the administrators will be, and how your single sign-on is set up. I'll put that in writing today.
- Niamh Costello NoneToday?
- Hannah Lowe NoneWell. By tomorrow. I don't want to say today and then be late.
- Niamh Costello NoneTomorrow is fine. I never accept vague timelines, I'm afraid, so I appreciate that.
- Matteo Ricci NoneThen to summarise, so we agree. Hannah sends the architecture note and the review checklist tomorrow. I send Ronan his one page, and a written confirmation of what your regulator needs to see, plus the split of the figure between implementation and subscription. Niamh, you bring your CISO and procurement together, and tell us who owns the connectors page.
- Niamh Costello NoneYes. And I will ask the leads from distribution and customer service to send me what they thought, even if it's only two lines each.
- Hannah Lowe NoneLovely. And if either of them has a question they would like asked on live data, send it over, and I'll run it before the review so that you see a real answer.
- Niamh Costello NoneI will. Thank you, both. That was better than I expected, and I expected to like it.
- Matteo Ricci NoneThank you, Niamh. Best regards to your team. Speak soon.
- Hannah Lowe NoneThanks, Niamh. Speak soon.
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