It has to be a "nice to have." Most of the time, your statement of "data is data is data" is just too true. My experience has been reasonably wide across various industries (I think) and I haven't had too many issues ramping up on the new set of business requirements. After all, just because you know insurance doesn't mean that you've got an instance understanding of some new set of business requirements that have occured because of a change in the law or moving into new territories in a new country... Any of these situations will require you to learn the new concepts and determine storage models, code, etc., to meet them.