How iA Financial Group strengthens data privacy and efficiency with Smart Shield
$165,000
25%
100%
Official
“Smart Shield helped us find the right balance, protecting employee data while still letting teams do their work, especially with proxy access.”
About iA Financial Group
iA Financial Group is a leading Canadian insurance and wealth management company operating across North America. With more than 10,000 employees and a strong focus on innovation, iA continues to evolve its HR technology landscape to improve efficiency, compliance, and employee experience.
A journey toward integration and modernisation
When iA Financial Group embarked on its Workday journey in 2016, the goal was to modernise a fragmented HR system landscape. “We replaced four systems at once — payroll, HCM, recruitment, and learning, to centralise and automate our HR processes,” explains Laurie Boulianne, HRIS Senior Advisor.
The organisation went live with Workday in November 2018, and since then, its HR landscape has evolved. As the organisation scaled, maintaining efficiency and compliance became a growing challenge.
The Challenge: Balancing growth and compliance
The HRIS team, managing over 35 projects per quarter, needed to free up time for strategic work and ensure the integrity of sensitive employee data across multiple Workday tenants. Data privacy risks in non-production environments made it increasingly difficult to balance compliance with operational flexibility particularly under Quebec’s evolving data protection regulations. “We had to constantly manage derogations and delete sensitive data after tenant refreshes,” recalls Mathieu Papineau, HRIS Advisor. “It created extra workload and risk. We knew we needed a better way.”
Faced with this challenge, the need for automation and data protection, iA Financial Group began exploring solutions that could integrate seamlessly with Workday, meet strict internal security requirements, and support the company’s long-term HRIS governance model.
Protecting what matters: Securing HR data with Smart Shield
Alongside automation, data security in non-production tenants became an urgent priority. As a regulated financial institution under Quebec privacy laws, iA Financial Group could not allow real employee data to be viewed outside of production. "Built-in Workday scrambling didn’t meet our security standards” explains Nathalie. "We needed something purpose-built for Workday that was flexible and compliant."
Before implementing Smart Shield, the HRIS team had to rely on restrictive access settings and manual derogations to meet compliance, both of which slowed project delivery. “We had to over-restrict access because we didn’t have the right tools,” says Mathieu. “It frustrated users and limited our ability to test properly.”
After evaluating internal and external options, Smart Shield stood out for its data masking capabilities and tight Workday integration.
Results and impact
The impact of Smart Shield has delivered measurable efficiency, compliance, and cost savings. With Smart Shield, iA Financial Group now masks around 14,000 fields per rule across all non-production tenants. Security and IT formally recognised it as an official data privacy control by September 2025. “The rollout went smoothly,” says Mathieu. “We fine-tuned our profiles to match different user needs, set up consistent masking across all tenants, and built governance around how we maintain it.”
The results were transformative: derogations were eliminated, compliance strengthened, and operational costs reduced by retiring their separate tenant saving $165,000 annually. “We can now test for multiple projects in one tenant,” says Nathalie. “It’s simpler, cheaper, and more secure.”
“There’s no way we’ll do anything without Smart Shield. It lets me sleep at night knowing our employee data is protected, while still empowering our teams to work effectively."
A trusted partnership with Kainos
For iA Financial Group, the success of Smart Shield was as much about partnership as technology. “With Kainos, everything was simple,” says Laurie. “They listened, adapted, and supported us, even when we extended the project, they stayed flexible with no extra fees.”
Mathieu agrees, “They were always responsive. Whether it was a new masking rule or an integration project, support was immediate.” Nathalie sums it up, “Kainos has been a great partner on our journey to be more efficient and compliant. They helped us strengthen our team and build a strong foundation for the future.”
Looking ahead
With Smart Shield now embedded as an essential part of iA’s HRIS governance model, future acquisitions and projects will rely on it from day one. Mathieu adds, “It gives us precision we never had before, down to the field level.”
Laurie concludes, “It’s a complete solution — secure, simple, and effective.”