Ardcarne Life Assurance / BG-Demo – Demo
Callcompleted
Ardcarne Life Assurance · 20 Apr 2026 15:15
Second demo for Ardcarne on masked data in their own Snowflake account. Niamh Costello is positive, but the CISO needs evidence in committee form. Two security items are open. Enterprise total of £155k restated; decision targeted for 30 Jun 2026.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Second demo for Ardcarne on masked data in their own Snowflake account. Niamh Costello is positive, but the CISO needs evidence in committee form. Two security items are open. Enterprise total of £155k restated; decision targeted for 30 Jun 2026.
What happened: Theo Gallagher ran a test space built from Ardcarne's extracts, showed sourced answers, role-restricted access and a saved dashboard. He listed two open security items: the DORA exit plan wording and the sub-processor description.
Customer view: Niamh said the date is firm for the business and slightly less firm for her CISO. She values that BG-Demo told them early about the outage last July.
Commercial: Matteo Ricci restated Enterprise at £155k, all-in with implementation, and said the proposal will separate one-off from annual. Niamh wants one document, and the signatory is not her.
Watch: The sub-processor item waits on the platform lead and could put the 30 Jun 2026 date at risk. The CISO is comfortable in principle only.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Security evidence, Enterprise proposal
Importance
renewal
Sentiment
positive
Voice
champion
Who was there
BG-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Theo Gallagher to send a one-page summary with open findings and owners by the end of the next day.
- Matteo Ricci to propose working session times with the CISO and then send the written proposal.
- Theo Gallagher to send the draft exit plan wording, marked as a draft, with the evidence pack.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- The sub-processor description waits on the platform lead and could threaten the decision date.
- The CISO is comfortable only in principle and needs committee-ready evidence.
- The signatory is not Niamh and will want the same pack as the CISO.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Enterprise tier fits the regulated, single sign-on and executive sponsor needs Niamh described.
- Customer-built dashboards after go-live show a path to deeper adoption with Elena Novak as customer success manager.
Transcript
Matteo RicciHello Niamh, can you hear me all right?
Niamh CostelloLoud and clear, Matteo. Good afternoon.- Matteo RicciGood afternoon. Theo's just joining, I can see him in the lobby. There he is.
Theo GallagherAfternoon both. Sorry, I'm a touch late, the call before this one overran. Give me a second, my audio is on the wrong headset.- Niamh CostelloNo rush at all. I'm only just back from a meeting myself, so I've got a coffee and about fifty minutes.
- Matteo RicciPerfect, that's what we've got. Let me restate where we are so we're all aligned, Niamh. Today is the demo, on your own data in a test space inside your Snowflake account. After that, Theo closes out the security evidence, I send you a written proposal, and the date we are working towards for a decision is Tuesday 30 June 2026. Does that still match how you see it?
- Niamh CostelloIt does. Broadly. I'd say the date is firm for the business and slightly less firm for my CISO, but that's exactly what I want to cover. Can we start with the outcome? What I want is for someone in broker distribution and someone in customer service to be looking at the same broker firm and seeing the same thing. Not two spreadsheets that nearly agree.
- Matteo RicciThat's the framing I would like to use. Theo, would you walk Niamh through it?
- Theo GallagherOf course. Before I share, can I list where we stand on the security review, so nobody is surprised? There are two open items. The first is the exit plan wording for DORA, which is with me. The second is the sub-processor description, which needs our platform lead to confirm, so I won't answer that on his behalf today. Everything else on the questionnaire has a control reference and evidence attached.
- Niamh CostelloThank you, that's useful. My CISO will want to see both, so it's good to have them named. Carry on.
- Theo GallagherRight, I'm sharing now. This is a test space we built from the extracts your team sent over, inside a Snowflake account that is yours, not ours. Nothing on this screen has left your environment. On the left you've got the sources we connected: the policy administration extract, your CRM, the helpdesk and a mailbox sample. Can you see that all right?
- Niamh CostelloYes, it's clear. Is that the real broker list?
- Theo GallagherA masked copy of it, as agreed with your data office. Real structure, real volumes, names pseudonymised. So when I search for a broker firm here, say the one on the third row, you get a page for that firm, built from every source at once.
- Niamh CostelloMm. And that page, who maintains it?
- Theo GallagherNobody, which is the point. It's rebuilt from the sources on the nightly refresh, which completes by 07:00 Irish time on business days. So at the start of a working day the page reflects the previous day's activity. If a source breaks, the page shows when it last loaded, so it doesn't pretend to be fresh.
- Matteo RicciAnd I would add, Niamh, that is the thing I'd like you to hold us to. Freshness is a stated service level, and let me confirm the exact wording in writing so there's no ambiguity about what is committed.
- Niamh CostelloPlease do. Right, ask it something real. Which broker firms have we been quiet with, where service queries are going up but nobody in distribution has spoken to them?
- Theo GallagherOkay, typing that in more or less as you said it. Give it a moment. Mm, there. It's come back with a short list of firms, and for each one it shows the source: tickets from the helpdesk, last contact from the CRM, and a note from an email thread. Click on the first and you get the evidence underneath the answer.
- Niamh CostelloSo I can see where it got that.
- Theo GallagherEvery sentence links back to a record. If there's no record, it says it doesn't know. That's a design decision, because in a regulated setting an answer you can't trace is worse than no answer.
- Niamh CostelloI agree with that completely. The thing that worries me, and I'll be honest, is that people will ask it questions they shouldn't be able to see the answers to. Claims details, for instance, or anything on a named policyholder.
- Theo GallagherRight. So permissions follow your existing roles. The brain doesn't have its own idea of who's allowed. It inherits access from the source systems and from the Snowflake roles, so if customer service can't see a field in the source, they can't see it through the brain. I can show you a user with a restricted role in a moment.
- Matteo RicciWhich, Niamh, I would ask you to put to your CISO directly: what does your regulator need to see on that point? I would rather we built the evidence around that question than around ours.
- Niamh CostelloThat's fair. Honestly, it's an access review, a record that it's enforced, and a way to show it regularly. Let's not over-engineer it. If the evidence is a control and a log, that's enough for me. Whether it's enough for my CISO is another matter.
- Theo GallagherWe can evidence that. The control reference is in the pack, and the access log export is something I can demonstrate on this space. Let me switch to the restricted user now.
- Niamh CostelloGo on then.
- Theo GallagherHere's a user with the customer service role. Same question, same wording. It returns fewer firms, and for the ones it does show, the underlying claims notes are simply absent. It doesn't say redacted, it doesn't hint. It treats them as not there.
- Niamh CostelloGood. Good, that's what I needed to see. And if someone gets their role wrong, is that on you or on us?
- Theo GallagherThe role definitions are with your team, with our guidance. The enforcement is the platform, and that's what the evidence covers. I would keep those two things separate in the paperwork, because the regulator will.
- Niamh CostelloYes. Yes, they will.
- Matteo RicciNiamh, can I ask about the brokers specifically, so that we show the thing you care about most before we run out of time? You said at the start, one view of each broker firm. Is there a firm you would like Theo to open that you know well?
- Niamh CostelloPick one of the larger ones. Actually, open the one at the top of the list, a regional broker with a long relationship. Distribution tells me they're happy. Customer service tells me they're a nightmare. I've never been able to put those two sentences next to each other.
- Theo GallagherRight, opening it now. So here's the page. At the top, the summary the brain writes from all sources. Then a timeline: meetings from the CRM, tickets, a handful of emails. And look, the tickets cluster in the last few weeks, while the last recorded conversation with distribution is well before that.
- Niamh CostelloThere it is. That's the whole argument in one screen. Distribution think the relationship is healthy because the last call was friendly. Service has been dealing with the fallout since.
- Matteo RicciAnd that's the kind of thing, if I may, that doesn't show up in a quarterly report. It sits in three systems, owned by three teams.
- Niamh CostelloCan it tell me which broker firms are like this one? Not just this firm.
- Theo GallagherYes, that's a dashboard question. Let me ask it for firms where ticket volume has risen and contact has dropped, and then save the result as a dashboard your team can open each morning. Your analysts can build those themselves, they don't need us. I'll just save that.
- Niamh CostelloLovely. And is that something my team would build or yours?
- Theo GallagherYours, after the first few weeks. In the implementation we build the first ones with them, and then they're theirs. Elena Novak, who would be your customer success manager, would sit with them after go-live.
- Niamh CostelloI've met Elena once, briefly. She seemed sensible.
- Matteo RicciShe is. And Niamh, I would rather you heard it from me: I stay your contact for the commercial side until signature, and Elena takes over the day to day relationship once the implementation is under way.
- Niamh CostelloGood. Now let's talk about the thing that will keep me awake. DORA. We're going to be asked about concentration, about exit, about what happens if you disappear. What do I tell the board?
- Theo GallagherOkay. Numbered, if you don't mind, because that's how your questionnaire is laid out. One, the brain runs in your Snowflake account, so your data and the working data stay in your estate. Two, because of that, an exit doesn't involve a data return from us; you already hold it. Three, what you would lose is the configuration, the page definitions and the connector setup, and we provide those as an export. Four, that is the exit plan wording still open with me, and I'll send it as a draft, marked as a draft.
- Niamh CostelloMarked as a draft, thank you. I've had vendors send me a final version that wasn't.
- Theo GallagherI don't call a draft final. The dated commitment will come with the version that is.
- Matteo RicciAnd the outage last July. I know the review ran right through it, so I would rather say it plainly: that is part of the evidence pack, including what was learned. Nothing is being kept back from your CISO's team.
- Niamh CostelloI appreciate that. It's one reason I'm still here, frankly. You told us early, and that matters more to me than a perfect record. My CISO's position is that he's comfortable in principle and wants the evidence in a form he can take to his committee. I need him comfortable, not just quiet.
- Theo GallagherUnderstood. I would suggest a working session with him, with the pack in front of us, mapped to the questionnaire one question at a time. I would rather do that than send a PDF and wait.
- Niamh CostelloYes, set it up. Matteo, can you coordinate? I'll nudge him.
- Matteo RicciOf course. I'll propose some times by email today, and I'll check with Theo and the platform lead before I put anything in writing. I won't offer a date engineering hasn't agreed.
- Niamh CostelloNow. Numbers. I know the proposal is coming, but give me the shape so I'm not surprised.
- Matteo RicciCertainly. We are talking about the Enterprise tier, because of the regulated setting, the single sign-on and the executive sponsor. The total deal value, as it stands, is £155,000, and that is the all-in figure, with the implementation included. I would rather say that clearly than let you read it as a yearly price.
- Niamh CostelloRight, so that's not the annual number.
- Matteo RicciNo. The proposal will separate the one-off implementation from the annual subscription, line by line, and you can check it against the order form before anyone signs. Let me confirm that in writing.
- Niamh CostelloGood. Whatever the numbers are, I want them in one document. I don't want a number in an email and a different one in a contract.
- Matteo RicciThat's exactly right. The executed order form is what counts, and I'll make sure the proposal and the order form say the same thing.
- Niamh CostelloAnd the person who signs on our side is not me, as you know. I'll prepare the ground, but the signatory will want the same pack as my CISO.
- Matteo RicciThat makes sense, so let me say the timeline back to you. Theo sends the evidence pack and the draft exit plan wording. I send the written proposal. You and your CISO have the working session. We're aiming for a decision by Tuesday 30 June 2026, and I would rather tell you now if anything on our side puts that at risk.
- Niamh CostelloIs anything at risk?
- Theo GallagherOnly the sub-processor item, which waits on the platform lead. I'll ask him tomorrow and tell you what he says, not what I think he'll say.
- Niamh CostelloThat's the right answer. One more thing, then I'll let you go. Can you send me a short written summary I can forward to my CISO before the session? Not the pack, a page. What we saw today, what is open, who owns it.
- Theo GallagherYes. A page: what was shown, the open findings with owners, and the dated commitments. I'll send it by the end of tomorrow, subject to the platform lead's confirmation on the one item.
- Matteo RicciAnd I'll follow with the proposal after that, so you have the summary first and the commercials second. Thank you both. Niamh, I'm grateful for your time.
- Niamh CostelloThank you. That was better than I expected, and I'm saying that as a cynic. Best to you both. Speak soon.
- Theo GallagherThanks, Niamh. Speak soon.
- Matteo RicciGrazie, Niamh. Speak soon.
- Niamh CostelloBye now, bye.
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