Barry Panayi, group chief data officer (CDO) at insurance firm Howden, is on a mission to create what he calls the datasphere. Rather than simply collecting data, he wants information and insight to become integral to joined-up business operations.
“Our work is not about producing a list of tables with numbers in rows and columns,” he says. “Yes, that effort is important, but it’s not the stuff that will set us apart. If you can get the information first – such as what’s happening in the supply chain or a technological advancement that’s affecting the business – we must factor that insight into the rows and columns of numbers. That’s the key business transformation for us.”
Panayi’s attempt to build the datasphere at Howden began in August 2025. He joined the firm after working for retailer John Lewis Partnership (JLP) for four-and-a-half years, where, as he explained to Computer Weekly in December 2022, his team oversaw data management, business intelligence, and research and insight.
Having previously worked in financial services as data chief at both Lloyds and Amlin, Panayi says the opportunity at Howden provided the chance to return to an industry he knew well, but with a different slant.
“I wanted to work for more of an upstart,” he says. “Howden felt right, because it had the scale – it was big, it was winning – but it wasn’t weighed down like one of the bigger incumbents.”
Panayi describes his new employer as a “hyper-growth company”. The firm employs about 23,000 people, having grown from around 10,000 employees five years ago. The use of data and technology is right at the centre of the company’s growth agenda. While Panayi enjoyed working for JLP, he was attracted by the ambition and energy he found at Howden.
“It’s just dynamic,” he says. “It’s a private and owner-led business. CEO David Howden owns the company. He’s enormously charismatic, and the organisation felt energetic. I thought I’d give the opportunity a go, and it’s been great.”
Leading change
Panayi looks back on his time at JLP and says his team’s biggest achievement there was ensuring the right insight and information were being pushed to people in shops and operational locations.
“We did all the cool stuff, like getting the platform and tools up and running, and maturing our capability. However, the thing that made the difference was, for the first time, people in our shops weren’t looking at printouts on pinboards. They had apps on their handsets that told them the location of a delivery or product, or pricing information,” he says.
“We did all these concepts, and they all took off and became industrialised. We did some cool AI stuff, but we made people’s lives better in the shops. We were able to get information to the people who actually use it. This insight meant there was more stuff on the shelf for people to buy, priced at the right price. And that’s what retail is about, buying something and selling it for more than you bought it for.”
“We want to get people using data, but not in a way that we build a massive central team. We want to do it a different way. That different approach comes with challenges, because entrepreneurialism means moving quickly, and sometimes things happen that you’re not aware of. But that all makes for a fun vibe”
Barry Panayi, Howden
Panayi recognises that leading data at Howden means working across a different type of organisation.
“We are so federated and entrepreneurial. That is David’s ethos – you get out of people’s way. We’ve grown through acquisition, so we don’t want to snatch everything into the middle. It’s a different challenge from JLP, because we want to get people using data, but not in a way that we build a massive central team,” he says.
“We want to do it a different way, which is quite rare, because big enterprises want to suffocate things. That different approach comes with challenges, of course, because entrepreneurialism means moving quickly, and sometimes things happen that you’re not aware of. But that all makes for a fun vibe.”
Panayi says Howden broke into the global top 10 insurers for the first time in 2025, and the senior executives at the firm can see a potential route to the top four. He gives an example of the rate of growth. Having started from zero in the US, the company employed 300 people before Christmas as it began its operation and added another 200 during the holiday period.
“When I joined, in my second week, I was told to go and help them set up the US business, from a data point of view,” he says. “So, we really are moving quickly.”
Developing products
As global CDO, Panayi manages data across 50 countries. The broad nature of the business also impacts his role. “We’re a broker, but also an underwriter and a reinsurer,” he says. “Because we do different things, it means the data also does different things.”
Panayi is responsible for the technical platform and engineering, as well as the data management and architecture around the insight the firm creates. He also oversees analytics, data science and machine learning, and has an internal transformation office with technical business analysts that can help drive pioneering projects.
“The data is everywhere, not because it’s poorly organised, but because there’s such a variety of information that our brokers need to have conversations with their clients. From a data point of view, the work involves more than identifying the data sources and ingesting them into a platform,” he says.
“It’s a lot more nuanced than that, and you could waste a lot of time trying to get everything into shape, when really what we need to do is help our brokers get the information they want, and that they didn’t know they wanted. And the way to serve that insight isn’t in a report in Power BI or Tableau. That just isn’t going to work.”
Instead, Panayi wants his team to help the business build dedicated products for the customers it serves.
“If you’re building a datacentre under the sea or in the desert or on a farm, insurance is different,” he says. “And if you’re insuring a restaurant, even if it’s the same cuisine and the same floor space, it matters where it is in the street, city and country. So, there’s a bit of an art involved in this work.”
Building the datasphere
Panayi says the business will continue to grow, which creates human resource demands. While technically capable staff are important, the key professionals for the data team are those who understand a wide breadth of operational activities.
“All these different lines of business have different questions,” he says. “I need people who are partnering with the business. I’ve never been in a position before as a CDO where I’m trying to employ those business translators almost as much as the technical people.”
Panayi explains what that focus means for the data products his team creates. He suggests the aim is to develop data-powered conversational interfaces that help employees make insight-led decisions.
“Our brokers need someone on their shoulder all the time,” he says. “They need technology that tells them the stuff they want to know immediately. For example, say they’ve just come out of a meeting, they need to speak to their AI on their phone to capture what’s happened, and the AI to say, ‘Oh, remember this element is coming up for renewal. You should speak with your colleague.’”
By sharing knowledge via emerging technology, Panayi says the company’s datasphere can bring together employees in disparate places. “Connecting people is another thing that data can do,” he says. “There’s a huge opportunity, as we grow and get a more varied business, for people to help our clients by referring them to other bits of Howden. We haven’t grown up together. We’ve grown up in different firms.”
Panayi returns to the example of datacentre insurance, where each part of the building process – construction, supply chain, fire and employee benefits – involves different elements of the insurance business. By sharing knowledge, colleagues can understand new opportunities. “We can do all that work, and the data is helping people at Howden to understand our cross-organisational relationships,” he says.
Spreading insight
Panayi wants these initiatives to be implemented during the next 24 months. Two years from now, he expects Howden employees to benefit from a mature data approach that’s unlike any other insurance business.
I would like one of our clients to stand on stage at an internal leadership event and say that the information and insight they get from their conversations with our brokers is unlike anywhere else. And I’d like brokers to say that this capability exists because they have power from everyone else’s data Barry Panayi, Howden
“Whatever question you have, there will be a bit of information or data or insight available to you quickly that helps you make a quicker or better or deeper decision. That will not be by chance – it’ll be by design that we have connected globally, the people who are talking to our clients,” he says.
The company’s datasets are held in Microsoft Azure, while the data platform is Databricks. Panayi says it plans to use as many native Databricks capabilities as possible, including Genie, a conversational interface on the platform that allows business teams to interact with data using natural language.
The aim is to create a simple platform for Howden to run complex data projects. The acquisitive nature of the firm means it’s crucial that technology can be used to help spread information and insight to internal employees across the organisation. He paints a picture of the technology-enabled, data-sharing business 24 months from now.
“What I would like is for one of our clients to stand on stage at an internal leadership event and say that the information and insight they get from their conversations with our brokers is unlike anywhere else. And I’d like brokers to say that this capability exists because they have power from everyone else’s data,” he says.
“No broker will be on their own talking to a client because they can tap into all our knowledge straightaway. I care about brokers and underwriters having superpowers. Ours are already the best in the market, but we’re going to make them brilliant – and our clients will tell us that. That’s what I want to happen.”
At 6:36 pm Cape Canaveral time, NASA’s SLS rocket lifted off without incident with the four members of the Artemis II spacecraft aboard. During the first few hours, Orion will complete its journey into Earth orbit and, throughout the first day, will conduct critical navigation and systems tests. Around the third or fourth day, the spacecraft will begin its trajectory toward the moon and cross its gravitational sphere of influence. In total, the mission will last approximately 10 days.
The mission includes the first woman and the first Black person on a crewed mission to lunar orbit. The launch comes 53 years after Apollo 17, the last crewed mission to the Moon.
The Artemis II crew will not land on the moon (that will happen on Artemis IV ). Instead, their capsule will fly at altitudes between 6,000 and 9,000 kilometers above the surface of the far side of the moon, circle it, and begin the return journey to Earth. The mission’s main objective is to demonstrate that the space agency has the technological capability to send people to the Moon safely and without incident.
Once they achieve this, NASA will begin preparations for new moon landings in the following years, which will aim to establish the first lunar bases in history and, with them, the sustained and sustainable presence of humans on the satellite.
The launch was successful and occurred on schedule. The launch window opened on Wednesday, April 1, at 6:24 pm Eastern Time (EDT) and could have been extended for two hours, if necessary. NASA would have had five more days to attempt another launch.
Mission Details
The astronauts took off on a NASA SLS rocket and are traveling inside the Orion capsule, described as a spacecraft about the size of a large van. They will orbit Earth for at least two days to test the onboard instruments. Then they will align the spacecraft to begin its journey to the moon. By the fifth or sixth day of flight, the capsule is expected to enter the moon’s sphere of influence, where the satellite’s gravity is stronger than Earth’s, and dock with its orbit.
When the spacecraft passes “behind” the moon, the most dangerous phase will begin. The crew will be out of contact with Earth for about 50 minutes due to interference from the moon itself. During this crucial moment, the crew must capture images and data from the moon, taking advantage of the far-more-advanced technology they carry than was available during the Apollo era.
After completing the return, the capsule will head home, taking advantage of the Earth-moon gravity field to save fuel. According to NASA estimates, by the 10th day of flight the crew will be close to reaching the planet.
IBM has begun working with chipmaker Arm to develop what it calls dual-architecture hardware to provide flexibility when running enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) and data-intensive workloads.
Their overall goal is to combine IBM’s experience in systems reliability, security and scalability that it offers on Z-series mainframe systems with Arm’s expertise in power-efficient architectures and supporting a broad software ecosystem to build flexible and scalable computing platforms for the future.
Arm has been on a path to deliver an alternative to x86-powered servers in the datacentre. The company has introduced the Arm Agentic AI (artificial intelligence) central processor unit (CPU) which it positions as a processor that is tasked with keeping distributed AI systems operating efficiently at scale. This includes orchestrating AI accelerators, managing memory and storage, scheduling workloads and moving data across systems.
This latest collaboration appears to be focused on deliver enterprise reliability to the Arm platform. It builds on IBM’s heritage of offering coprocessors for the Z-series hardware such as the Integrated Facility for Linux, which was introduced in 2000. The mainframe manufacturer later introduced a Linux system based on the Z-series architecture, called LinuxOne, designed to let enterprise customers run Linux workloads in situ with data that resides on the mainframe system.
Christian Jacobi, chief technology officer and IBM fellow of IBM systems development, said: “This moment marks the latest step in our innovation journey for future generations of our IBM Z and LinuxOne systems, reinforcing our end-to-end system design as a powerful advantage.”
Mohamed Awad, executive vice-president of the cloud AI business unit at Arm, said: “Our collaboration with IBM builds on this progress, extending the Arm ecosystem into mission-critical enterprise environments and giving organisations greater flexibility in how they deploy and scale these workloads.”
The two companies said they are exploring how to expand virtualisation technologies that allow Arm-based software environments to operate within IBM’s enterprise computing platforms. According to IBM and Arm, this work is designed to expand software compatibility and streamline how developers and enterprises bring Arm applications into mission-critical environments.
In the security and reliability front, the pair plan to investigate new ways to support the performance and efficiency demands of modern workloads, including AI and data-intensive applications. IBM and Arm said they will be looking at how to enable enterprise systems to recognise and execute Arm applications.
The two companies also hope to provide a broader software ecosystems and greater flexibility in how applications are deployed and managed. IBM plans to offer new systems for its customers that incorporate Arm’s technology.
Tina Tarquinio, chief product officer of IBM Z and LinuxONE, said: “Our aim is to expand software choice and improve system performance while maintaining the reliability and security our clients expect.”
The collaboration is seen as a signal of how enterprises may eventually deploy scalable, flexible IT infrastructure to support different types of application workload.
Patrick Moorhead, founder, CEO and chief analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, added: “What IBM and Arm are signaling here is a meaningful step toward that future that could broaden how enterprises think about deploying and scaling modern workloads. While the full implications will take time to unfold, it’s clear this reflects a deeper level of investment in long-term platform innovation and ecosystem expansion than we typically see at this stage.”
Under a new state regulation, venture capital firms operating in California were supposed to submit demographic data about their portfolio companies, including the gender and race of startup founders they backed. But amid public criticism from some tech leaders, the California agency administering the new requirement suspended it just before the Wednesday deadline for firms to make their first disclosures.
“The California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) has announced that it plans to initiate rulemaking in response to comments by various stakeholders relating to the Fair Investment Practices by Venture Capital Companies Law,” the state agency posted on its website in mid-March. “Implementation and enforcement of the [law] will be suspended pending completion of the rulemaking and until final regulations are in place.”
California lawmakers first passed the measure in 2023, and it was signed into law shortly thereafter by Governor Gavin Newsom. For decades, women and people of color have received only a small share of overall startup funding relative to their representation in the US population. Lawmakers hoped putting more public scrutiny on investment decisions would help foster greater equity in the market, including for people who are disabled, retired military, or LGBTQ+.
The law called for venture capital and some other investment firms to file annual reports starting March 1 of last year about the overall makeup of the founding teams they had invested in and the amount of money they provided to diverse founders. Firms were meant to collect the demographic data through a voluntary survey that was then anonymized. California authorities planned to publish the filings online. Lawmakers amended the law in 2024 to delay reporting until April 1, 2026, and enable the state to levy daily fines for noncompliance.
The California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the authority it used to sidestep the deadline set by lawmakers. Newsom’s office also didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Financiers focused on funding entrepreneurs from underrepresented backgrounds had supported the law. But the National Venture Capital Association, the tech investment industry’s leading trade group, opposed it. The group argued that voluntary data collection would inflate diversity statistics and that publishing inaccurate data could lead to unfair attacks on investors genuinely trying to tackle diversity issues. Over the past year, the Trump administration has defunded and attacked diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives in both the public and private sectors, leading many businesses and organizations to pull back from them.
In February, the venture capital association wrote to Newsom asking for the reporting deadline to be pushed back again because, in its view, the state had bungled the process. California authorities didn’t publish the standardized survey that founders were supposed to fill out until early this year, and at the time they still hadn’t introduced a way for firms to register with regulators as required by the law, according to the association. “This administrative timeline creates an environment ripe for error and threatens to produce the misleading and counterproductive data we previously warned against,” association president and CEO Bobby Franklin wrote.
Last month, as the deadline for the first reports loomed, some entrepreneurs and investors began complaining on social media about the survey effort. “The latest California malarky is a requirement for venture investors to collect/report racial and gender statistics,” wrote Blake Scholl, the founder and CEO of venture-backed aviation startup Boom Supersonic. “I want to live in a world where merit matters—not skin color or what you have between your legs.”
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