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2011 November 2013

Business Powered By Technology BusinessInnovation Innovation Powered By Technology

Meet eight talented executives who are reshaping IT and delivering results in a transforming insurance industry >>

PLUS
Right place and time >> Catch up with last years honorees >> Table of contents >>

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November 2013

Contents
COVER STORY

4 The Power Of Technology

These eight insurance IT executives have that elusive combination of skills that makes them true leaders.

4 Michael Healy, AXA Equitable Group 6 Judy Haddad, Patriot National 8 Mark Caron, Capital BlueCross 1 1 Piyush Singh, Great American Insurance Group 1 4 Manish Bhatt, MetLife 16 Robin Arendt, XL Group 18 Peter Moreau, Amica Mutual 2 0 Suren Gupta, Allstate

FROM THE EDITOR 3 Right Place And Time

This years Elite 8 winners understand technology, culture, customers and risk, and you can join us at a live event honoring them.

23 Onward And Upward

Find out what some of our 2012 honorees have accomplished in the past year and where they are now.

26 Editorial & Business Contacts

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FromTheEditor

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Right Place, Right Time

dentifying leadership in the insurance technology space can be a tricky undertaking, somewhat akin to how the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart defined pornography: I know it when I see it. Similarly, its simple to rattle off a roster of attributes one would expect to encounter in an effective chief information officer, but history has shown that an impressive resum and collection of academic degrees is no guarantee of success. It takes an elusive combination of technical skills, vision and creativity, business savvy, and human insight, along with an unpredictable alignment of market conditions, economics and technology advances, to make a successful inKatherine Burger, surance CIO. Theres no predictable Editorial Director @kathyburger formula for making this happen. Still, the I-know-it-when-I-see-it guideline is reliable when it comes to Insurance & Technologys 2013 Elite 8 honorees.
www.insurancetech.com

Now in its 15th year, I&Ts Elite 8 report identifies the top technology executives in insurance who are leading the deployment of technology to make a difference at their companies and in the industry. This years honorees work in a variety of lines of business, for huge and for small companies, and are responding to a wide variety of business and operational mandates. But they do share an understanding that the transformational power of technology doesnt happen without shared values; a culture of collaboration and learning; and deep insight into customers, risks and markets. In addition to the Elite 8 profiles featured in this issue, you can learn more about the leadership secrets of this years and past Elite 8 honorees at a new Insurance & Technology live event, the 2013 Elite 8 Executive Forum & Awards: Leadership, Vision, Results, taking place Nov. 7 at the Trump SoHo New York in New York City. We will celebrate the achievements of the 2013 Elite 8 winners and high-

light the strategies, skills and lessons learned these executives deploy to lead their organizations to success. Conference sessions featuring insights from some of the 2013 Elite 8 executives, along with Elite 8 honorees from previous years, will cover topics including Leading the High-Performance Insurance IT Organization, Profiting on the Leading Edge: Leveraging Investments in Breakthrough Technologies, and Advancing the Transformation Agenda: Getting Results on the Vision. The program will culminate with the annual Elite 8 Awards Dinner and Ceremony. For more information about the 2013 Elite 8 Executive Forum & Awards and to register, contact me at katherine.burger@ubm. com or visit the event website at elite8forum. insurancetech.com. Truly effective and innovative leadership makes a difference in any industry, and in insurance we are fortunate to be able to recognize and learn from true technology leaders whose accomplishments are for real. n
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Elite 8 2013 Michael Healy, AXA Equitable Group

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All The Bases Covered

Insurers can draw technological inspiration from many places, says AXA Equitable CIO Michael Healy.
By Nathan Golia
NateG_InsTech

Michael Healy
CIO, AXA Equitable; $176 billion in assets Education: St. Johns University Previous roles: Senior VP, Marsh & McLennan Hobbies: Manages a travel Little League team

nsurance CIOs tend to spend their workdays under intense pressure, managing large teams and budgets, examining the minutiae of lines of programming code, and putting out fires that pop up from time to time. As such, many spend their free time on calm, solitary hobbies: crafts, books, outdoor activities, etc. But Michael Healy, CIO of AXA Equitable, bucks this trend: When away from his job, he manages a youth baseball team in his hometown, the New York City borough of Staten Island. Its a frenetic, highpressure environment but one that he says is highly rewarding. It is a team that plays at a high level and we travel, Healy says. In the end, though, its still managing a bunch of 12- and 13-year-old boys. You try to take some of your organizational skills with you, but in the moment, its organized chaos. One might expect the management lesson from such a hobby would be about the intricacies of dealing with different egos or skill levels, or relating in-game strategy around double switches or pitching matchups to making vendor or budget choices. But as a technologist, Healy sees a different lesson: the integration of advanced technologies in places that once seemed unlikely. For example: Even in Little League, stats are electronic. We use an iPad app to track all our stats, Healy says. I introduced it about two years ago. You still need to do the record-keeping aspect of the game the league expects it, and I have to turn it in as part of the compliance. And that investment in a tool for compliance had ancillary benefits, he says. It gives

Weve pushed our vendors and service providers to support these concepts that the business comes up with.

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Elite 8 2013 Michael Healy

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parents who cant make the games real-time access to whats happening, something thats important in a world where, Healy notes, people often have better technology at home than what they have at work. And so, many of Healys successes at AXA have been related to giving stakeholders functionality that keeps pace with their increasing technological savvy. For a long time, we were primarily a BlackBerry shop. But the agents werent big fans of it, because in some cases we had to downgrade their technology, he says. Were trying to meet the challenges of the sales force, and weve implemented a hardwareindependence strategy. The crown jewel of this shift is a straight-through processing platform for which Healy led development over a couple of years. The goal was to flip a process that was paper-intensive and led to as much as 70% not-in-good-order applications on its head. Healy began by rearchitecting the companys policy administration platform for annuity products, because of a product development need that was initially specific to that line of business. If you think back to 2006 or 2007, annuity carrier competition was fierce, he explains. It started to become a race to change products. So we had a lot of back-end systems that needed to feed or transport data. That was our launchpad to putting in the service-oriented architecture. Product Innovation AXA now uses the annuity system as its policy administration platform for all products, Healy says, giving it a big advantage as the need for product innovation has expanded beyond just annuities. Other people are still trying to figure out how to put new products
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on their platform, but since our flagship annuity admin system is the processing engine for all the products we have, weve made some really big strides in innovation on the product front, he says. Weve pushed our vendors and service providers to support these new concepts that the business comes up with. In the process of the revamp, AXA began to explore cloud vendors for the first time. That affects the bring-your-own-device strategy as well, Healy explains, because using Web services makes security a different proposition. We looked really hard we probably spent over a year evaluating security packages that we could use that would give us some level of policy in our ability to manage these devices, he says. The product engine and the straight-through processing capabilities have gone a long way toward improving the agent and customer experience, but Healy also used the major project as an impetus to change the way his organization develops and delivers new software. The company brought in outside firms to help it learn to deliver software in a more iterative way and operate on budget in terms of both time and money. It was crucial that the additional training was inclusive and broke down a lot of the walls among the staff so that everyone bought in, he says. We didnt want to create two organizations where only some people had the cool badge. But whether youre talking about changing processes internally or introducing a new portal to a sales force, delivering on promises goes a long way in mitigating any wounds, Healy concludes. Ive been in insurance for a while and Ive worked at brokerage houses, and one of the hardest parts is getting people to adopt new technologies. But once you show whats in it for them, it helps. p
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Elite 8 2013 Judy Haddad, Patriot National

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A Vision For Growth

Patriot Nationals Judy Haddad unleashed the power of modern systems and mobile technology at the workers compensation carrier.
By Nathan Golia
@NateG_InsTech

Judy Haddad
CIO and CTO of Patriot National Insurance Group; $300 million in-force premium

ts been about five years since Judy Haddad took over as CIO and CTO of Patriot National Insurance Group, a workers compensation carrier based in Florida. One might compare the state of the companys IT infrastructure when Haddad started with how it is now and say its unrecognizable. But that only goes as far as the systems themselves, she says. Haddad speaks with pride of the IT staff that has stuck by her and helped her implement an aggressive growth strategy. When I came on board we were a very small department in a small company, Haddad says. I had maybe eight people. We have close to 50 people now and quite a few of the people have been on for four years or so. The folks that have grown in the process have seen the company grow exponentially. Haddad credits a strong relationship with company CEO Steven Mariano with empowering IT. Mariano understood that the company could not meet aggressive growth targets with outdated infrastructure, Haddad says. Once we could see IT was respected as an asset to the organization, weve been able to build an incredible partnership with the business, she says. We have a vision and strategic direction of where we want to go and who we want to be as a company, and IT is in lockstep. Haddad set out to replace Patriots core systems but had to lay the groundwork first. Her initial project to enable the growth strategy was the construction of a data warehouse. We knew we wanted to add functionality to our systems at the time, but because this

Size of IT staff: 50 people Previous roles: NYMAGIC, NCCI Holdings, CGU Insurance Education: Clark University, Nova Southeastern University Hobbies: Reading biographies Once we could see IT respected as an asset to the organization, weve been able to build an incredible partnership with the business.

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project was mammoth, we had to break it down, she says. I coined the term, No data left behind. We tried to do everything in our power to get to 100%, and we were able to achieve a great amount of success. Built From The Ground Up With the database groundwork laid, it was time to select a new core. The company considered bolting on some new front ends to its AS/400 legacy system, Haddad says, but abandoned the idea because the company needed newer technology and processes that could handle full-fledged claims and billing across the entire organization. Front-end solutions are great for underwriting, but the rest of the world gets left behind, she says. In the end, Haddad went with the WorkersCompExpert policy administration system from Vikaran. Patriot is the first organization to implement the workers compensation version of the system, which is based on Vikarans InsuranceExpert product for other lines. I loved that it was a brand-new system, because they took what every IT shop tries to do as core disciplines and incorporated it, she adds. When you are building a system ground up, you can architect a solution that is truly on a platform for growth. If were looking at doing other lines, we can do that. In September 2010, Vikaran got the green light after a proof of concept. By January of the following year, the project started, and by the end of that year, quotes were being processed on the new system. Haddad worked closely with the vendor to not only blaze the trail for Patriot but also for Vikaran as a vendor and partner looking to establish a new product.
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Since we were Vikarans first client for this system, theyre looking at putting in installations in other clients, theyre thinking that showing their commitment to all their customers is whats going to differentiate them. So they were in lockstep with us the whole way, on site even for the proof of concept. Once the process got started and implementation was in full swing, Haddad and Patriot were able to become insurance industry frontrunners in using next-generation technologies like cloud computing and especially mobility. Some of that groundwork for mobile technology was laid even before the selection of Vikaran. Haddad says Patriot implemented BoardLink, a Thomson Reuters business intelligence portal app, for some of its board members, and also has claims adjusters using iPads and iPhones. WorkersCompExpert has some built-in mobile capabilities that are able to continue advancing Patriot in this area. Vikarans QuickQuote capability allows marketing representatives to use iPads to give quotes to agents, and Haddad is able to check in with a mobile dashboard to get crucial performance metrics such as response times, benchmarking, and quote-and-bind policy information. We think about, what are those things that an app would be the best for? Our next step will be a mobile app where agents and clients can do billing and things like that. In the end, Haddad says, Patriot is poised for success in the insurance and technology realms because of the vision of management and the loyalty of the staff. Through this project I have seen folks that I thought were good become great, she says. Thats sort of the success story out of all of this. p
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Elite 8 2013 Mark A. Caron, Capital BlueCross

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Thriving On The Challenge Of Change

Capital BlueCross SVP and CIO Mark Caron is marshaling analytics capabilities to help the insurer provide consumers with medical value in a market transformed by healthcare reform.
By Katherine Burger
@KathyBurger

Mark A. Caron
Senior VP and CIO, Capital BlueCross; more than $2 billion in revenues Size of IT organization: 200 employees, plus 70 in analytics, 20 in the healthcare provider initiatives group IT budget: 1.5% to 2% of companys revenue base Career: Joined company in 2011 after stints leading IT at OptumHealth, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Wisconsin, and others

heres probably no more exciting (or challenging) role in insurance IT right now than health insurer CIO. Not only is technology the foundation of just about everything payers must do to comply with the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which takes full effect in 2014, but healthcare reform is driving a significant change in health insurers business models also significantly enabled by technology. So its a good thing Capital BlueCross senior VP and CIO Mark Caron, CHCIO, FACHE, declares, I really enjoy the challenge of change. Not only is health insurance changing, he notes, but technology is as well, which makes it imperative to identify where those opportunities are for the best bang for the buck for us to bring to the marketplace. In other words, he adds, We want to help drive the cost structure down in the industry and make people better, and give them the tools to enlighten themselves to help them live better. The scope of Carons responsibilities illustrates what this involves. In addition to IT, Caron oversees the companys healthcare payer initiatives group, which creates accountable care arrangements and works with new reimbursement initiatives and Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services pilots. He also runs the corporate analytics group that is

We are going where our customers are,

reaching out to them, Education: MBA, masters, comwherever they are. puter IS, Southern New Hampshire University; BS, computer science, Franklin Pierce College

www.insurancetech.com

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producing healthcare and financial analytics for Capital BlueCross. At the same time, Caron is working on driving our cost structure down, doing things smarter, better and more innovatively in IT, and partnering with the right partners. Add to that implementation of an enterprise architecture model, started in 2012, that is about the business model and care models we as an organization have embraced. Its all geared toward supporting a business strategy that prioritizes creating medical value for our customers, and driving toward consumerism the shift, which the ACA will accelerate, from a focus on employers to individuals as the primary buyers of health insurance, says Caron. The role of technology is to drive innovative ways to meet those needs [and] market demands. We are going where our customers are, reaching out to them, wherever they are. Consumerism is not just insurance, Caron notes. There are other services we are developing to offer clients, such as information about managing chronic illnesses. And as physicians and other providers seek help in managing new requirements and financial models, Capital BlueCross is focusing on what kinds of information and tools will help them drive more quality measures and be more cost effective with care. The concept of medical value, Caron says, comprises cost, access, selection, transparency and quality. Its having a product that will allow you, at a certain price point that is affordable, [to obtain] the best value care at the best cost and the best quality tools that help consumers understand why surgeons who perform the same procedure at different facilities charge different fees, for example. None of this can be accomplished without data, and expanding Capital
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BlueCross capabilities around analytics is a top priority for Caron. We are building a platform that becomes much more extensible, and takes in additional data beyond traditional claims data, he says. Were working with our physician partners, taking the clinical data out of the electronic medical records and continuum of care documents. Were using that data to start to better understand the risk factors about a patient. New Era Of Collaboration This kind of information sharing is part of what Caron sees as a new era of collaboration between payers and providers. I believe now the industry is less us versus them, and more what we need to do together to drive costs curves down. All the physician group and hospital group CEOs I meet with are much more open to collaboration, he says. The insurer now can contact its customers with information about relevant special programs or offers. Were going to send you a message however you want it, whether you want it as text, a pop-up on your iPhone or an email, Caron says. The vision would be, at some point, an a la carte ability to pick benefits that you want at a price point and maybe network of physicians you want. When such capabilities become ready for prime time, Caron says, they will all be driven by a heavily analytical process that becomes foundational to everything we do. Our company is making substantial, multimillion-dollar investments in these tools and in extending the platform, so it truly becomes a population health management tool and a platform for our physicians and our clinicians. And we also are expanding it to be a market-driven consumer-focused analytical platform. To develop these capabilities, Capital BlueCross has turned to IBM and
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its Netezza data warehouse offerings, SAP/Business Objects tools and Optums OptumInsight (formerly Ingenix) products. Still, Caron says, there are gaps in the health insurance technology market. A challenge as the industry is evolving is that there is not one nirvanic platform that can handle all the different types of information required by the ACA, he contends. For now, the solution is building an integrated platform by partnering with various vendors. Another data-related challenge is the competition for analytics talent. This is especially tough in health insurance, where so much of the data management involves complex healthcare claims-specific codes and transactions. There is a big shortage of people who are informatics savvy with healthcare, Caron notes. One step he has taken to address this problem is a partnership with Harrisburg University to create a fellowship intern program focused on healthcare analytics. The university offers a medical analytics informatics masters program, and we are integrating with that, to evolve that program to become very focused on real-world experience, so students are not just learning in the classroom what the data and data sets are, Caron explains. We are bringing them onto various project teams and working with them, having them use their skills to understand what the real world is around [healthcare informatics]. p
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Elite 8 2013 Piyush Singh, Great American Insurance Group

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Gold Standard
Great American Insurance Groups Piyush Singh is overseeing an overhaul of the P&C Groups entire technology footprint as well as transforming the way IT interacts with the business.
By Anne Rawland Gabriel

Piyush Singh
Senior VP and CIO, Property and Casualty, Great American Insurance Group; $8.7 billion in revenue, Q2 Size of IT/technology team: 800, including contract staff Previous position: CIO, RLI Corp. Education: Masters in computer applications, University of Delhi; MBA, Bradley University; Advanced Executive Education Program at the Wharton Business School; and CPCU designation

gold certification by the U.S. Green Building Council under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program for its skyscraper Cincinnati headquarters isnt the only precious asset at Great American Insurance Group. Shortly after Piyush Singh won his first Insurance & Technology Elite 8 award in late 2005, the property and casualty group at Great American scooped him up to become its senior VP and CIO. Back then I&T had just honored Singh for transforming RLI Corp.s legacy-based backoffice-focused IT infrastructure into a leading-edge, Internet-based front-end system. In its January 2006 announcement of his appointment, Great American implied similar goals. Yet Singhs efforts at the subsidiary of American Financial Group ($39 billion in total assets) have gone beyond IT modernization. Hes spearheaded a cultural transformation of his IT organizations operational mindset as well as its relationship with the business putting him at the forefront of a paradigm shift occurring across the financial services. Before, we were order-takers, Singh says of his IT organization. Now our role is to be engaged with our business partners so they can achieve market leadership or gain competitive advantage through innovative use of technology solutions. For Singh, being a partner means more than understanding and responding to a particular business situation. Its also about bringing in knowledge and insight from different industries across diverse product lines and business practices, he says. Singh emphasizes that the goal of every tech project is engineering a solution that fits

Before, we were order-takers. Now our role is to be engaged with our business

partners. Spare time: Singh has scaled Mount Kilimanjaro, but Im totally afraid of deep water. He also advises early-stage startups and runs the charity Karna for at-risk children.
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into the larger landscape, not simply automating manual processes. We take a long-term perspective because business processes and technologies always evolve yesterday we built for the Web, today its mobile and tomorrow it will be something else, he says. Whats critical is visioning and architecting broadly, so that whatever you build is sustainable. In practice, such partnership-centricity sometimes requires his IT staff to take detours. This occurred early in Singhs tenure when mobile interfered with the move away from mainframe-based core applications. Three years into it, mobility hit us, he says. Our job became deploying mobile, because mobility is absolutely changing the way we do business. Regardless, for the core systems transformation, Singhs charted course replaced the P&C groups existing IT footprint with a heterogeneous mixture of integrated applications in an effort to leapfrog technology. Innovations included building the platform on a service-oriented architecture, an unheard-of strategy in traditionalist industries at that time. According to Singh, performing an end-to-end transaction without any human interaction was the fundamental concept behind the new platform. By 2009 wed accomplished it for one business line, which essentially enabled us to connect all the pipes, he says. Build, Buy, Integrate What makes the feat notable is Singhs pursuit of a build, buy and integrate strategy as the gold standard, rather than acquiring a single vendor-developed platform. Specifically, Singhs team built three major subsystems submission management, policy administration and enterprise data warehouse as well as numerous other components and services wherever it
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provided us with competitive advantage, he says. Other subsystems were purchased and integrated into the platform. These include rating (Accenture Duck Creek), forms (HP Exstream), billing and claims (Guidewire), producer relationship management (Ebix), CRM (Salesforce.com), enterprise content management (IBM FileNet) and enterprise service bus (Aurea, formerly Progress). We can swap out a particular technology if a vendor stops innovating or processes evolve that require a new way of doing things, he says. As a result, our company will never have to endure a complete overhaul again. Despite all of his contributions to the P&C group, Singhs humility is unwavering. The biggest blessing at my job is the wonderful and really smart people I get to work with every day, he says. I credit my entire success to being a member of the Great American team. Singh is also an active participant in the larger insurance industry IT community, regularly lending his thought leadership. Peering into the future, he foresees a couple of tectonic shifts. The first is consumer-centricity. Our language and how we market our products is still very insurance-centric, he says. Thats about to change. To illustrate, Singh cites the airline industry, where only travel agents could issue tickets less than two decades ago. Now, travelers not only buy tickets, but their boarding pass is delivered to their phone, he says. The second game changer is driverless cars. As Singh points out, automobile accidents take an average of 30,000 to 35,000 lives annually. Driverless cars, he argues, will expand transportation to the underserved, such as elderly and disabled individuals, while being safer. Googles car has already proven it, says Singh. If we can reduce fatalities even by half, thats 15,000 lives saved every year.p
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If you develop a mobile app, for instance, and you dont have a business model or engagement model behind it, then people will not use it. Creating a mobile app for the sake of creating an app wont necessarily provide business benets. Rethinking the process and rethinking the engagement model will give you benets. The new way of thinking requires that you consider your engagement models for a particular segment rst, and then create capabilities that can meet their needs. For example, one of my labs created an app around agent productivity. We didnt think enterprise-out, we thought outside-in. We started by considering what a day in the life of an agent looks like, and the capabilities an agent needs to be more productive. Then we created an app that gives agents all the capabilities they need for many different functions,

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To learn more about how insurers can use technology to their best advantage, visit Tata Consultancy Services at www.tcs.com/insurance.

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Elite 8 2013 Manish Bhatt, MetLife

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The Cutting Edge

MetLifes Manish Bhatt has a mandate to innovate, and no channel is too obscure to explore.
By Nathan Golia
NateG_InsTech

he life insurance industry is at a crossroads. A third of U.S. households have no life insurance at all, and half say they need more, but 86% say the product is too expensive, according to LIMRA research. At the same time, the middle-income demographic, a prime target for life insurance companies, is more concerned with reducing debt and saving enough money for retirement than buying the product, LIMRA says. Thats where Manish Bhatt, chief digital officer for MetLife, comes in. His mandate has been to find new and innovative ways to reach that middle-income market. That group is less responsive to the traditional life insurance sales process that involves going into an agents office for consultation, Bhatt says. This segment definitely doesnt have enough life insurance, and to reach the underserved middle market, you have to be where they are, he says. Then once you get in there, you have to have simple solutions and simple products. Its a very fast-moving business. Technology underpins a lot of what Bhatt has done to create a modern customer experience at MetLife, which is making a big push to be more customer-centric and to do business in a variety of channels. That change involves using the power of computing to develop MetLifes reflective application, which changes questions based on how people answer. If you say you have a family history of something, well give you five or six extra questions on that, Bhatt says. When we first filed this process with the states, they didnt fully understand what we were doing. But we feel the reflective application is more detailed than paper, and now we can do a fully underwritten policy online. MetLife powers its online life insurance sales with real-time third party data sources

Manish Bhatt
Chief digital officer, MetLife; $9 billion in operating premium, Q2 Size of IT staff: 100 Education: Haverford College, Columbia University Hobbies: Wine collecting, reading history, driving Previous roles: With MetLife since 1994; last was VP of lead generation and CRM

The best way to learn about what works for a customer is in the real world, not the research world.

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(which the company declined to name) that Bhatt says truly help us make good underwriting decisions. That experience led to the pilot of a project that turned a lot of heads: offering life insurance in a box at Wal-Marts in South Carolina and Georgia. Bhatt says the Wal-Mart initiative took a lot of what MetLife learned from online sales, such as creating a simple product and using third-party data. The product is actually a prepaid debit card; interested customers call or go online to register their cards, answer some questions, and if they qualify, they get a policy. If not, the card defaults to a cash debit card. We didnt want Wal-Mart to have to get licensed. It would be a logistical nightmare trying to get 300,000 cashiers life insurance licenses, he says. So we had to figure out a way to sell insurance without selling insurance, which led us to the concept of the card. Even though it was in a physical store, technology was crucial to the Wal-Mart effort. First, MetLife and partner CSC had to create business processes to make sure previously siloed systems like policy administration and billing could share data required to offer a policy. Then MetLife had to establish and report metrics to gauge if the test was a success. We went out very quickly, ... and we learned what we needed to change like making it simply a card instead of a box, he says. MetLife also began placing kiosks in stores so consumers could take the card and start the process qualification process right in the store. Metrics System From Bhatts perspective, the most important tactic for reaching MetLifes target customer is trying new things and using metrics to see what needs fixing. The best way to learn about what works for a
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customer is in the real world, not the research world, he says. When we put something out, the one thing we know is if somethings not right. Thats why metrics are huge for us. We see the trends of where are people dropping off and where they are potentially confused. As an example, Bhatt says, MetLife used to ask for daytime and evening phone numbers in its online application. People were pausing ever so slightly over that, perhaps trying to figure out where their mobile phone fit in or if they were likely to be at an office number enough to make it worth entering. A simple switch to primary and secondary numbers led to an 18% increase in leads. In the time they were thinking about it, their phone buzzes and theyre on to the next thing, he says. Subtle changes can make a big difference. When theres a bottleneck, we try to find several ways around it. Bhatt has been with MetLife since 1994. In that time, he says, hes seen a lot of changes in marketings relationship with the technology department. He himself has been straddling the two worlds, especially since being named head of the direct division in 2006. Companies that want to shift to digital business models need an effective division of responsibilities between IT and marketing technology. Theres no shortage of articles that say the role of the CIO is changing, and theres no way that an IT pro could add all these things onto what theyre already doing, he says. My feeling is, How can I help with those things that take up all your mindshare? Its trying to find those areas where its not the highest value in terms of your time. Bhatt sees his role as pushing initiatives and guiding them through implementation and evolution. If we dont stretch ourselves and try these things, we dont know what were leaving on the table, Bhatt says. p
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Elite 8 2013 Robin Arendt, XL Group

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The Power Of The Team

To help drive profitable growth, XL Groups global CIO, Robin Arendt, is overseeing a massive IT transformation that combines core system replatforming with innovation and strategy sizzle.
By Katherine Burger
@kathyburger

Robin Arendt
IT budget: $280 million IT organization: 1,200 XL employees and global sourcing partners Career: Joined XL in 2010 after three years as CIO, North America Commercial, Zurich; VP, corporate business development/IT, Safeco (2004-2007); Accenture (1993-2004)

self-described people person, Robin Arendt has a passion for inspiring and developing IT professionals. I love that part of the job, declares Arendt, global CIO of P&C and reinsurance firm XL Group. I love to find a diamond in the rough, someone who hasnt gotten the exposure or recognition, see the potential and help them grow into better leaders. I had the advantage of that myself, and it goes a long way. Her passion for people development and what she calls the power of a team has given Arendt a significant advantage in attracting top talent to XL. Youre only as successful as the colleagues you work with, she says. Its really about the network and people I worked with before and bringing them together. This is fortunate for XL because it has enabled Arendt to assemble the necessary resources to tackle a wide-ranging business transformation encompassing eight strategic initiatives: implementation of new global claims and underwriting systems, data center consolidation, modernization of pricing applications, enhancement of XLs internal and external Web portal, development of an enterprise data warehouse infrastructure, a new client and broker management system, improved risk management capabilities and introduction of innovation teams. Leveraging software partners including Microsoft Dynamics, FirstBest, Duck Creek, SAS and Cognos, its part of a five-year IT road map to support XLs profitable growth. The impetus came from CEO Michael McGavick (with whom Arendt worked when he was CEO of Safeco), who identified talent and technology as the two drivers of XLs success. My

Global CIO, XL Group, Stamford, Conn., $45.4 billion in assets

Youre only as

successful as the Education: University of Minne colleagues you sota, St. Thomas, BA in business management, accounting, finance work with. Off the job: Arendt says shes always wired Ive got to have the latest technology and test it before any of the business leaders come to me and say they want it.
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Elite 8 2013 Robin Arendt

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mission is around enabling the strategy and providing the flexible systems or capabilities that enable the business to really support complex risk and have scalability. For XL to potentially double or triple in size profitably my IT budget cant grow two to three times its size, she adds. The only way to do that is move to global platforms. When she joined XL in 2010, Arendt encountered an environment with siloed and redundant systems. We are replatforming our core business platforms, all the way, from the front end, which is managing our customer and distribution channels, through the core underwriting and policy processing [systems], all the way to the back end, she says. Then youve got all the data and analytics in support of every single process underpinning the strategic programs. Business/IT Cooperation So far, migration to a single global claims system (Accentures Claims Components) has been completed. Overall, execution on the eight initiatives will be about 50% done by the end of the year, and about 80% complete by the end of 2014, Arendt reports. Not surprisingly, a key factor in the progress of the transformation has been a strong partnership between IT and the business. Every program has a different business sponsor who is paired with an IT program manager so there is joint leadership on both sides that is really driving the change. Since the transformation involves several potentially multiyear projects, Arendt has sought ways (with the help of agile development methodologies) to break them up into smaller pieces and achieve some quick wins that motivate the IT team and show progress to the business partners what she calls strategy sizzle. According to Arwww.insurancetech.com

endt, Along the way we identify quick wins to add incremental business value. One such recent win was the launch of an iPad-based risk engineering app, developed in conjunction with Cognizant. This also is where XLs revived focus on innovation comes into play. When the IT road map was launched in 2011, Arendt assembled a small team that adopted kind of a strike-force approach to business solutions you have to be able to deliver in 90 to 120 days. The team didnt focus on large, hairy, complex problems, but small issues, such as providing risk engineers with a mobile system. Although the group produced more than 12 innovations, after that first year Arendt recognized that there were missed opportunities to tap into the ideas and creativity from other XL colleagues. For 20122013, we went from innovating through a central team to innovating with project teams, she says. Were trying to take the same approach and embed that further into the organization. Its more than the familiar deliver on time and at budget mandate, although Arendts organization consistently has done so throughout the transformation. She explains, All of the goals for my IT organization are aligned with achieving business outcomes, and then taking the next step, around the benefits were going to achieve. All that gets fed into the businesses plans. That accountability is built into the business as well as IT and it comes through in the performance goals. It all comes back to the power of the team, Arendt says. Its one thing building out a system; its another thing putting the right training, support and accountability in place so end users can successfully leverage the new technology. Your return on investment will be marginalized if you dont get that right. p
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Elite 8 2013 Peter Moreau, Amica Mutual

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Building Local Pride

Amica Mutual CIO Peter Moreau demonstrates the value of insurance IT being closely aligned with the business and knowledgeable about the market.
By Nathan Golia
@NateG_InsTech

Peter Moreau
Senior VP and CIO, Amica Mutual; $4.5 billion in assets Size of IT organization: 300 people Time at Amica: 28 years Education: Bryant University Hobbies: Hockey

mica Mutual Insurance has been a direct writer of insurance since well before the gecko-and-Flo age. With direct, agent and hybrid writers alike all pouring money into advertising, the company has to be adept at identifying its differentiating characteristics, CIO Peter Moreau says. Amica is a longtime pillar of the New England region it calls home, consistently earning top scores in J.D. Powers annual studies on customer satisfaction and maintaining remarkable market penetration in the region. In a very competitive space on the auto insurance side from a price perspective, advertising and growth are important, Moreau says. From our beginnings, Amica was about word of mouth people really liking us and then getting their friends to call us. Sometimes those are your best references. From our perspective, were trying to promote our financial strength and our strong relationships with customers. During Moreaus tenure at Amica, many of his IT initiatives have revolved around supporting the companys high standards for customer service and satisfaction. But that means more than just exploring new technologies. The IT backbone of Amicas service proposition has its roots in a transformation effort many years in the making. In 2005, Amica was an early adopter of Guidewires ClaimCenter platform. It was a risk to go with a relatively new product for such a crucial customer interaction point, but it set the stage for a full migration to the Guidewire suite over the next several years. This

Were trying to promote our financial strength and our strong relationships with customers.

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initial decision, Moreau says, put Amica ahead of the pack. We needed to make sure the run side of the business was as efficient as possible, and the channels we worked in were becoming more complex, he says. We knew moving to modern technology was going to position us better. When you looked at our legacy system, it was highly functional but a challenge to integrate with. We wanted our new system to facilitate those interactions instead of just bolting more function onto our legacy environment. ClaimCenter went live in 2008, helping lay the groundwork for an expectation of user experience and process that revolved around data, not paper, Moreau says. When it came time to look for a new policy administration system, PolicyCenter was the choice after a thorough selection process. In late August of this year, Amica rolled out PolicyCenter in some initial states with its auto line. It takes years to move away from a legacy policy system, but youre seeing more and more companies go down that road, Moreau says. You have to take that view if youre in it for the long haul. After choosing Guidewire for claims and policy, the next step was to complete the suite with BillingCenter. All three were evaluated independently, Moreau says, but a common infrastructure provides value. There are tough decisions to make about how much concurrent work we can sustain as a company, and were right in the middle of it with two key core systems: policy and billing, he says. Its a large investment in resources and time to make it happen, even with a package. But the system is architected for integration and built for maintenance, and we like that. Guidewire has a keen focus on maintainability, and the cost of running a system has to be factored in going forward.
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Thats because customer standards for service can change quickly and broadly, Moreau explains. The ability to incorporate new channels is important in an always-on, always-connected world. Customers are driving expectations for us in the tech area, along with the online systems they use unrelated to insurance, such as social sites, banks and Amazon, he says. We have to ask ourselves: How can we match the speed of operations like these and meet customer expectations from a self-service perspective? Mapped Out To manage all these projects, Moreau and his team developed a road map of necessary capabilities and the timeline for delivery. This required tight business-IT alignment. Amicas leadership is tuned in to the benefits of modernization and fully supports completing the journey. Im a big road map guy. I know we have a corporate strategic plan that IT has to map to, but we also have to run the business as is. Having a good process and having the business understand its importance is key, he explains. In some organizations, the leadership might choose a short-term, bolt-it-on solution to react to market pressure. But we are moving away from our mainframe environment, and it takes a broad vision and long-term goals to make it happen. The early benefits of the move are already obvious on the claims side, he says. But what it comes back to for Moreau, a native of Amicas home state of Rhode Island, is providing his friends and neighbors with the best possible service experience in all interactions. When technology works well, it helps our representatives do what they do best: build enduring relationships with policyholders, he says.p
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Elite 8 2013 Suren Gupta, Allstate

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Adding Seats To The Table

Allstate technology head Suren Gupta revamped the companys IT strategy to facilitate greater customer lifetime value.
By Nathan Golia
@NateG_InsTech

Suren Gupta
Executive VP of technology and operations, Allstate; $8.7 billion in revenue, Q2 Size of IT budget: $1 billion Prior roles: CIO, Wells Fargo Education: West Virginia University, George Mason University, Harvard Business School Hobbies: World travel; serving on the Chicago Public Library Foundation We absolutely have to focus on the things [where] we can make the biggest dent in terms of value.

hen hes not managing Allstates IT as executive VP of technology and operations, Suren Gupta says, he likes to travel with his family. I like going to other countries and seeing different cultures, he says. And the same could be said of his long career as an IT innovator and manager: Gupta has worked for a telecom company, Intelsat; a division of General Motors; and immediately before coming to Allstate, as CIO of the bank Wells Fargo. Hes become adept at identifying the similar ways in which the industries hes worked in are being disrupted. There used to be a time when banks thought the brick-and-mortar branch would be threatened by the advent of the Internet, but instead its just that the role that they play is very different than what it used to be 20 years ago, Gupta says. I see the same kind of dynamics with our agents, who will become much more central in terms of managing the relationship with the policyholder. During Guptas two-plus years at Allstate (Northbrook, Ill.), he has presided over a sea change in the insurers technology department and enterprise overall. He has instituted reforms that more tightly align technology strategy with business strategy and set in place a framework for innovation that keeps employees at all levels thinking about whats possible in the insurance business with advanced technologies on behalf of customers. There has to be a balance between strategy-driven technology, where the busi-

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Elite 8 2013 Suren Gupta

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ness defines the value that they want the technology to deliver, and technology-driven strategy, where you really sit down and identify technologies that will improve the business or consumer experience, he says. The second category is the cloud, and how that kind of infrastructure affects insurers ability to play in the mobile big data world, Gupta says. That flows directly into the third, which comes under the larger umbrella of decision sciences and includes the potential for big data and analytics to help the company price, rate and risk-profile its services and products. We want to get to a point where as youre changing your lifestyle, I as an agent should be able to advise on how I can protect you better, he says. The whole notion of being able to cross-sell and upsell is near and dear to my heart. Thats where the agencies play a big role in helping our customers make the right choices we need to enable our agents with information and technology so that they can provide high value to our customers. Thats where the rubber hits the road for tech its where tech brings the value-added information that our customers are looking for. Close To The Business But the thrill of playing with advanced technologies is tempered by the realities of insurance IT infrastructure, according to Gupta. We absolutely have to focus on the things [where] we can make the biggest dent in terms of value, he says. So Gupta worked to realign the IT organization more closely with Allstates businesses. He created a layer of divisional CIOs, each rewww.insurancetech.com

sponsible for a different line of business at Allstate, who integrate with working groups for horizontal IT capabilities such as infrastructure, testing, release management, program management and architecture. The goal was that I wanted the DCIOs to have more accountability and responsibility as partners to the lines of business, and I wanted consistency across the organization, he explains. The divisional CIOs and his other officers are held to five pillars by which IT organizes the metrics it needs to achieve, according to Gupta. The first four are:  How valuable their technology implementations are to the customer How well they partner with Allstates businesses to meet their needs How well they optimize cost  How well they manage regulatory risk and meet compliance requirements But Gupta is also a big believer in rewarding effective and efficient innovations and implementations across all levels of the IT organ ization. That leads to the fifth pillar: how well his officers are able to make Allstate a great place to work. Its a pillar Gupta holds himself to as well. I believe this is the best time to be part of a company like Allstate, he says. I firmly believe innovation has no boundaries, and anyone in the organization can come up with an idea and submit it. To that end, Gupta has sponsored App Attacks, where small teams compete to use off-the-shelf technology to solve a business problem in a novel way, as well as Innovation Blitzes, in which the organization
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Elite 8 2013 Suren Gupta

2011 Business Innovation Powered By Technology

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as a whole is encouraged to crowdsource solutions to business problems. Weve got a really well-defined strategy in how we support our business, Gupta says. And we have a priceless asset in our agencies thats a huge network of agents that reaches into the local communities that we serve. It gets back to the lesson Gupta took from his banking days: Its not so much about shifting all customer interactions to digital channels; rather, its about leveraging what agents do best and developing technology that puts them on the right path to serve customers. The difference in banking and insurance is frequency of touch. Something like Drivewise [Allstates usagebased insurance program] is a way for us to make sure we can serve our customers better, give them rewards or give them feedback, he says. Agents become the center of interaction for us they can actually advise our customers with a better protection plan. And in a colossally competitive arena like P&C insurance, that is invaluable. If you look at the top five U.S. advertisers in the P&C space, we collectively have spent more than $3.5 billion, which is almost 23% higher over 2010, Gupta concludes. When you see that competition intensified to that level, you have to make sure you seize every opportunity to deliver extra value for our customers.p
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ELITE 8 2012: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

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Onward And Upward

A continuing focus on core systems modernization and process automation, along with enabling the ongoing shift toward digital interactions, is among the priorities of the 2012 Elite 8 honorees. Insurance & Technology caught up with some of them to learn more about their activities and accomplishments over the past year.
By Peggy Bresnick Kendler

Focus On The Customer

Greg Clancy Senior VP and CIO, Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance

also is retooling documents with new document-creation software. Another big area of concentration is dealing with regulatory changes that mainly affect Indiana Farm Bureaus life company. And finally, Clancys group is creating new commercial products.

n the decade since he joined the writer of farm, personal lines and life, 2012 Elite 8 award winner Greg Clancy, Indiana Farm Bureau Insurances senior VP and CIO, has completely remade his firms IT organization and was responsible for replacing the insurers primary systems. Hes remaining busy this year with four important areas of focus that include revamping front-end systems, introducing new products and implementing new software. We are focusing on our customer-facing systems involving electronic applications and signatures in both the P&C and life companies, Clancy notes. Were also working to improve customer access to policy documents and on paperless document delivery. Clancys team

Big Innovations From A Small Insurer

Graeme Boddy CIO, Builders Mutual

or the past five years, Raleigh, N.C.-based Builders Mutual Insurance Co. CIO Graeme Boddys IT team was driven by geographical expansion and major systems renovation activities, making radical changes to many of the carriers processes. Ive been busier in this small company than I ever was working in the larger companies, which is both a beautiful and a bad thing, relates 2012 Elite 8 honoree Boddy. BuildNovember 2013 23

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ELITE 8 2012: WHERE ARE THEY NOW? ELITE 8 2012: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

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ers Mutual is incredibly agile and incredibly inventive. This means that well always have more opportunities than there are people and money to do things. But at the same time, Im never going to get bored. Boddy says he now runs the mail room as well as the insurers imaging capabilities. This is only because to be able to use those effectively, they need a lot of IT knowledge and capability, he notes. And with those we are actually finding some better ways of doing things as mundane as printing mail and keeping our costs down. Major milestones Boddys group completed this past year include a new business front end and e-commerce capabilities. About 75% of our new business is coming through our e-channel, he says. Were seeing our paper channel dry up and the e-commerce channel becoming the normal way of doing business right now. Weve had to really undergo a cultural change in our thought process. Builders Mutual also has some new leadership in its underwriting area, Boddy says. We are getting that we need to make some changes to keep up with evolving business conditions and as we grow, he adds. Im not sure that every company really does.

ployee engagement and motivation, as well as the benefits of simplifying systems for greater ease of use and efficiencies. This year, Gueli has continued in her role in what she says has been a year of exciting growth for our business. Nationwide Financial continues to invest in programs that benefit its customers and drive growth in its businesses, which include some systems transformation projects, according to Gueli. Were transforming platforms and adding capabilities to bring new features to our retirement plans, life insurance, annuities and banking customers, she explains. Our ultimate goal is to do everything we can to help America prepare for and live in retirement.

A Steady Stream Of Initiatives

Michael Fergang CIO, Grange Insurance

Ready For Growth

Susan J. Gueli Senior VP and CIO, Nationwide Financial

W
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hen Susan Gueli, senior VP and CIO of Nationwide Financial, won the Elite 8 honor in 2012, she had been seeing the positive results of her teams efforts to increase em-

range Insurance CIO Michael Fergang has not let up the pace of his groups activities since winning the 2012 Elite 8 award. On the contrary, under his direction, Grange Insurances IT department is having another busy and successful year. And Fergangs IT group also reached several milestones in the past 12 months. For instance, Granges small commercial system is complete. Im proud to say that were seeing 127% growth beyond what our plan had been, and it was an ambitious plan, he says. Many projects are in various stages. Fergangs group is in the process
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of building out Granges new auto product and is rolling out its new document automation system, from HP Exstream. Fergangs group also recently completed an agency technology road map. In addition, Fergang says his department is plowing ahead on other large initiatives. Among them are a new auto product that should launch in January, a new home product to launch next year, and an initiative to expand the amount of data in its warehouse. Were not undertaking any huge initiatives like implementing new core systems, Fergang says. But we continue to peel the onion to see if theres something our group can do to make us a better organization.

Change Is A Constant
Three of Insurance & Technologys 2012 Elite 8 honorees have moved on from their previous positions. Sal Abano, who had been senior VP and CIO of New Yorkbased Tower Group Cos., left his post in September. Abano is now executive VP, chief of strategy and client services, at MajescoMastek. Ellen Fecteau has retired from her job as CIO of Liberty International Underwriters. At publication time, she had not been replaced. Mark Clark left his position as senior VP and CIO at Jackson National Life Insurance Co. and is planning a technology-based startup company. p
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