IT Digital Issue 2013 11

PLUSRight place and time >>

Catch up with last year’s honorees >>

Table of contents >>

November 2013 Business Innovation Powered By Technology

Meet eight talented

executives who are

reshaping IT and delivering

results in a transforming

insurance industry >>

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2011 Business Innovation Powered By Technology

COVER STORY

4 The Power Of TechnologyThese 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 11 Piyush Singh, Great American Insurance Group 14 Manish Bhatt, MetLife16 Robin Arendt, XL Group18 Peter Moreau, Amica Mutual 20 Suren Gupta, Allstate

FROM THE EDITOR3 Right Place And TimeThis year’s Elite 8 winners understand technology, cul-ture, customers and risk, and you can join us at a live event honoring them.

23 Onward And UpwardFind out what some of our 2012 honorees have accomplished in the past year and where they are now.

26 Editorial & Business Contacts

November 2013 2www.insurancetech.com

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November 2013

November 2013 3

Identifying leadership in the insurance technology space can be a tricky under-taking, somewhat akin to how the late Su-

preme Court Justice Potter Stewart defined pornography: I know it when I see it. Similarly, it’s simple to rattle off a roster of attributes one would expect to encounter in an effec-tive chief information officer, but history has

shown that an impressive resumé and collection of academic de-grees is no guarantee of success. It takes an elusive combination of technical skills, vision and creativ-ity, business savvy, and human insight, along with an unpredict-able alignment of market condi-tions, economics and technology advances, to make a successful in-surance CIO. There’s no predictable formula for making this happen.

Still, the I-know-it-when-I-see-it guideline is reliable when it comes to Insur-ance & Technology’s 2013 Elite 8 honorees.

Now in its 15th year, I&T’s Elite 8 report iden-tifies the top technology executives in in-surance who are leading the deployment of technology to make a difference at their companies and in the industry. This year’s honorees work in a variety of lines of busi-ness, 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 doesn’t 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 year’s 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 achieve-ments of the 2013 Elite 8 winners and high-

light the strategies, skills and “lessons learned” these executives deploy to lead their organi-zations to success. Conference sessions fea-turing 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 Transfor-mation 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 regis-ter, contact me at [email protected] or visit the event website at elite8forum. insurancetech.com.

Truly effective and innovative leadership makes a difference in any industry, and in in-surance we are fortunate to be able to recog-nize and learn from true technology leaders whose accomplishments are for real. n

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Katherine Burger, Editorial Director

@kathyburger

FromTheEditor

Right Place, Right Time

November 2013 4

Insurance CIOs tend to spend their workdays under intense pressure, managing large teams and budgets, examining the minutiae of lines of programming code, and put-ting 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. It’s a frenetic, high-pressure 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, it’s still managing a bunch of 12- and 13-year-old boys. You try to take some of your organi-zational skills with you, but in the moment, it’s organized chaos.”

One might expect the management lesson from such a hobby would be about the in-tricacies 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

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All The Bases CoveredInsurers can draw technological inspiration from many places, says AXA Equitable CIO Michael Healy.

Michael Healy CIO, AXA Equitable; $176 billion in assets

Education: St. John’s University

Previous roles: Senior VP, Marsh & McLennan

Hobbies: Manages a travel Little League team

“We’ve pushed our

vendors and service

providers to support

these concepts that

the business comes

up with.”

By Nathan Golia NateG_InsTech

November 2013 5

parents who can’t make the games real-time access to what’s happen-ing, something that’s important in a world where, Healy notes, “people often have better technology at home than what they have at work.” And so, many of Healy’s successes at AXA have been related to giv-ing stakeholders functionality that keeps pace with their increasing technological savvy. “For a long time, we were primarily a BlackBerry shop. But the agents weren’t big fans of it, because in some cases we had to downgrade their technology,” he says. “We’re trying to meet the challenges of the sales force, and we’ve implemented a hardware-independence strategy.”

The crown jewel of this shift is a straight-through processing plat-form 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 company’s policy administration platform for annu-ity 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 InnovationAXA now uses the annuity system as its policy administration plat-

form 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

on their platform, but since our flagship annuity admin system is the processing engine for all the products we have, we’ve made some really big strides in innovation on the product front,” he says. “We’ve pushed our vendors and service providers to support these new con-cepts 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 capabili-ties 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 soft-ware 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 ev-eryone bought in, he says. “We didn’t want to create two organizations where only some people had the ‘cool’ badge.”

But whether you’re 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. “I’ve been in insurance for a while and I’ve worked at brokerage houses, and one of the hardest parts is getting people to adopt new technologies. But once you show what’s in it for them, it helps.” p

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November 2013 6

It’s been about five years since Judy Haddad took over as CIO and CTO of Patriot Na-tional Insurance Group, a workers’ compensation carrier based in Florida.

One might compare the state of the company’s IT infrastructure when Haddad started with how it is now and say it’s 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 empow-ering IT. Mariano understood that the company could not meet aggressive growth tar-gets with outdated infrastructure, Haddad says.

“Once we could see IT was respected as an asset to the organization, we’ve 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 Patriot’s 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

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A Vision For GrowthPatriot National’s Judy Haddad unleashed the power of modern systems and mobile technology at the workers’ compensation carrier.By Nathan Golia

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

Size of IT staff: 50 people

Previous roles: NYMAGIC, NCCI Holdings, CGU Insurance

Education: Clark Univer-sity, Nova Southeastern University

Hobbies: Reading biographies

“Once we could

see IT respected

as an asset to the

organization, we’ve

been able to build an

incredible partnership

with the business.”

@NateG_InsTech

November 2013 7

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 UpWith 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 admin-istration system from Vikaran. Patriot is the first organization to imple-ment the workers’ compensation version of the system, which is based on Vikaran’s 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 we’re looking at doing other lines, we can do that.”

In September 2010, Vikaran got the green light after a proof of con-cept. 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 estab-lish a new product.

“Since we were Vikaran’s first client for this system, they’re looking at putting in installations in other clients, they’re thinking that showing their commitment to all their customers is what’s 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 front-runners in using next-generation technologies like cloud computing and especially mobility. Some of that groundwork for mobile tech-nology was laid even before the selection of Vikaran. Haddad says Patriot implemented BoardLink, a Thomson Reuters business intelli-gence 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. Vikaran’s 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, benchmark-ing, 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 be-come great,” she says. “That’s sort of the success story out of all of this.” p

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November 2013 8

There’s 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 every-thing 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 it’s a good thing Capital BlueCross senior VP and CIO Mark Caron, CHCIO, FACHE, de-clares, “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 op-portunities 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 Caron’s responsibilities illustrates what this involves. In addition to IT, Caron oversees the company’s healthcare payer initiatives group, which creates account-able care arrangements and works with new reimbursement initiatives and Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services pilots. He also runs the corporate analytics group that is

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Thriving On The Challenge Of ChangeCapital 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. CaronSenior VP and CIO, Capital BlueCross; more than $2 billion in revenues

Size of IT organization: 200 employees, plus 70 in analytics, 20 in the health-care provider initiatives group

IT budget: 1.5% to 2% of company’s revenue base

Career: Joined company in 2011 after stints leading IT at OptumHealth, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Wisconsin, and others

Education: MBA, master’s, com-puter IS, Southern New Hamp-shire University; BS, computer science, Franklin Pierce College

“We are going where

our customers are,

reaching out to them,

wherever they are.”

November 2013 9

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 busi-ness model and care models we as an organization have embraced.”

It’s all geared toward supporting a business strategy that prioritizes “creating medical value for our customers, and driving toward con-sumerism” — 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 custom-ers 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 pro-viders seek help in managing new requirements and financial mod-els, 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, se-lection, transparency and quality. “It’s 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 differ-ent facilities charge different fees, for example.

None of this can be accomplished without data, and expanding Capital

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. “We’re working with our physician partners, taking the clinical data out of the electronic medical records and continuum of care documents. We’re using that data to start to better understand the risk factors about a patient.”

New Era Of CollaborationThis 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. “We’re going to send you a mes-sage 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 founda-tional to everything we do. Our company is making substantial, multi-million-dollar investments in these tools and in extending the platform, so it truly becomes a population health management tool and a plat-form 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 Optum’s 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 ‘nir-vanic’ 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 master’s program, “and we are integrat-ing 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 Mark A. Caron

November 2013 11

A gold certification by the U.S. Green Building Council under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program for its skyscraper Cincinnati headquarters isn’t 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 casu-alty 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 back-office-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 Singh’s efforts at the subsidiary of American Financial Group ($39 billion in total assets) have gone beyond IT modernization. He’s spearheaded a cultural transformation of his IT organization’s 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 com-petitive advantage through innovative use of technology solutions.”

For Singh, being a partner means more than understanding and responding to a par-ticular business situation. “It’s also about bringing in knowledge and insight from differ-ent 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

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Gold StandardGreat American Insurance Group’s Piyush Singh is overseeing an overhaul of the P&C Group’s entire technology footprint — as well as transforming the way IT interacts with the business.By Anne Rawland Gabriel

Piyush SinghSenior VP and CIO, Property and Casualty, Great Ameri-can Insurance Group; $8.7 billion in revenue, Q2

Size of IT/technology team: 800, including contract staff

Previous position: CIO, RLI Corp.

Education: Master’s in computer applications, University of Delhi; MBA, Bradley University; Advanced Ex-ecutive Education Program at the Wharton Business School; and CPCU designation

Spare time: Singh has scaled Mount Kilimanjaro, but “I’m to-tally afraid of deep water.” He also advises early-stage startups and runs the charity Karna for at-risk children.

“Before, we were

order-takers. Now our

role is to be engaged

with our business

partners.”

November 2013 12

into the larger landscape, not simply automating manual processes. “We take a long-term perspective because business processes and technolo-gies always evolve — yesterday we built for the Web, today it’s mobile and tomorrow it will be something else,” he says. “What’s critical is vision-ing 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 Singh’s tenure when mobile in-terfered 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, Singh’s charted course replaced the P&C group’s 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 archi-tecture, 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 we’d accomplished it for one business line, which es-sentially enabled us to connect all the pipes,” he says.

Build, Buy, IntegrateWhat makes the feat notable is Singh’s pursuit of a build, buy and

integrate strategy as the gold standard, rather than acquiring a single vendor-developed platform.

Specifically, Singh’s team built three major subsystems — submission management, policy administration and enterprise data warehouse — as well as numerous other components and services “wherever it

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), bill-ing 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, Singh’s 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. “That’s 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, au-tomobile accidents take an average of 30,000 to 35,000 lives annually.

Driverless cars, he argues, will expand transportation to the under-served, such as elderly and disabled individuals, while being safer. “Google’s car has already proven it,” says Singh. “If we can reduce fatali-ties even by half, that’s 15,000 lives saved every year.”p

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www.insurancetech.com

SPECIAL ADVERTISEMENT SPECIAL ADVERTISEMENT

Q What are the current business trends that will potentially affect insurers in the next decade?

A There’s continual business dis-

ruption today, which some call the “new

normal.” Change is always happening. Consumer

needs are changing, and how consumers want

to be engaged is changing. Distribution — how

we sell, what we sell, to whom we sell — that’s

all changing. And the products themselves are

changing as well, becoming simpler and more

bundled. And what’s more, service is changing,

touch points are changing and engagement mod-

els are also changing. On top of that, there are

disruptions from the economy and regulations,

and threats from possible new entrants.

Q How can technology help insurers deal with this constantly changing business environment?

A They need to be more agile, more

nimble and very innovative. The old thinking, old

processes and old business models must be re-

placed by newer innovative business models and

newer ways of doing things.

To me, technology enables innovation. Tech-

nology simply provides new tools for the insurers’

toolkits that can help them develop and implement

new business models that will give them an edge

in meeting changing business conditions. Today’s

technology can go a long way toward helping

insurers improve the way we connect with one

another, how we sense demand, how we buy, how

we consume and more. There are innovations that

involve big data, cloud, social and mobility.

Q What measures must insurers take to meet these challenges?

A Insurers should continue to see how

they can make their businesses more and more

efficient, and they must keep driving more effec-

tiveness in the marketplace as well — whether it’s

effectiveness within products, effectiveness with

service models or how effectively they engage with

consumers and agents.

Innovative Digital Models Help Insurers Meet the Challenges of a Changing Business Environment

Q Would a realistic road map be helpful in moving insurers along their digital journey?

A Absolutely. Having a digital road map is

essential, but it needs to be completely aligned with

business strategy. Insurers must keep transforming

their business, so they need to understand how a

digital road map can help that journey.

To fully leverage a road map, insurers also must

define what innovation means to them. The context

is very important and varies significantly by industry

segment. If you’re a consumer property and casu-

alty (P&C) company, innovation will mean different

things to you than if you’re a life insurer or a commer-

cial insurance broker. And, if you’re a global or a local

company, the context will be different for you as well.

Q What are the dangers of inno-vating without a solid business reason in place?

A If you develop a mobile app, for instance,

and you don’t 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 won’t

necessarily provide business benefits. Rethinking the

process and rethinking the engagement model will

give you benefits. The new way of thinking requires

that you consider your engagement models for a par-

ticular segment first, and then create capabilities that

can meet their needs.

For example, one of my labs created an app around

agent productivity. We didn’t 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,

including point-of-sale

capabilities. An agent can use

the app to do a needs analysis for his or her client, run

an illustration, do an e-signature, get a new business

application completed for a client, track the status of

cases, get his own business plan done, and see how

his business plan is tracking to his actual commis-

sions. We built all these capabilities into a mobile

device for agents so they don’t have to do anything

on paper or go back to an agency anymore. Digital

is enabling new models for insurers, helping them

reimagine their business and innovate.

Q How can insurers get started?

A I would advise a three-pronged strat-

egy. First, define a digital strategy aligned with

your business goals and your context. Then, quickly

implement some pilots, which will allow you to learn

and adjust fast. You don’t want to be involved in a

multiyear plan without understanding what works

in your context.

Second, try to simplify and transform what you

already have. The majority of larger reinsurers, for

instance, are sitting on a large and complex legacy

infrastructure. You need to remove complexity from

the environment.

And third, invest in creating a culture of innovation.

To compete in the current marketplace, insurers have to

create a culture of innovation within their organizations.

They must be able to use new ideas to change or reform

their business models on a continuous basis.

To learn more about how insurers can use

technology to their best advantage, visit Tata

Consultancy Services at www.tcs.com/insurance.

Vinod KachrooCTO & Global HeadIndustry SolutionsInsurance & HealthcareTata Consultancy Services

November 2013 14

The 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 de-

mographic, a prime target for life insurance companies, is “more concerned with reduc-ing debt and saving enough money for retirement” than buying the product, LIMRA says.

That’s 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 agent’s office for consultation, Bhatt says.

“This segment definitely doesn’t have enough life insurance, and to reach the under-served 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. It’s a very fast-moving business.”

Technology underpins a lot of what Bhatt has done to create a modern customer experi-ence 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 MetLife’s “reflective application,” which changes questions based on how people answer.

“If you say you have a family history of something, we’ll give you five or six extra questions on that,” Bhatt says. “When we first filed this process with the states, they didn’t fully un-derstand 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

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The Cutting EdgeMetLife’s Manish Bhatt has a mandate to innovate, and no channel is too obscure to explore.

By Nathan Golia

Manish Bhatt Chief digital officer, MetLife; $9 billion in operating pre-mium, 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.”

NateG_InsTech

November 2013 15

(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 didn’t want Wal-Mart to have to get licensed. It would be a logis-tical 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 administra-tion 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 SystemFrom Bhatt’s perspective, the most important tactic for reaching

MetLife’s target customer is trying new things and using metrics to see what needs fixing. “The best way to learn about what works for a

customer is in the real world, not the research world,” he says. “When we put something out, the one thing we know is if something’s not right. That’s 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 “eve-ning” phone numbers in its online application. People were pausing ever so slightly over that, perhaps trying to figure out where their mo-bile 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 “second-ary” numbers led to an 18% increase in leads.

“In the time they were thinking about it, their phone buzzes and they’re on to the next thing,” he says. “Subtle changes can make a big dif-ference. When there’s a bottleneck, we try to find several ways around it.”

Bhatt has been with MetLife since 1994. In that time, he says, he’s seen a lot of changes in marketing’s 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.

“There’s no shortage of articles that say the role of the CIO is chang-ing, and there’s no way that an IT pro could add all these things onto what they’re already doing,” he says. “My feeling is, ‘How can I help with those things that take up all your mindshare?’ It’s trying to find those areas where it’s not the highest value in terms of your time.”

Bhatt sees his role as pushing initiatives and guiding them through im-plementation and evolution. “If we don’t stretch ourselves and try these things, we don’t know what we’re leaving on the table,” Bhatt says. p

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November 2013 16

A 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 hasn’t 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. “You’re only as successful as the colleagues you work with,” she says. “It’s 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 XL’s internal and external Web por-tal, development of an enterprise data warehouse infrastructure, a new client and broker management system, improved risk management capabilities and introduction of innova-tion teams. Leveraging software partners including Microsoft Dynamics, FirstBest, Duck Creek, SAS and Cognos, it’s part of a five-year IT road map to support XL’s 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 XL’s success. “My

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The Power Of The TeamTo help drive profitable growth, XL Group’s global CIO, Robin Arendt, is overseeing a massive IT transformation that combines core system replatforming with innovation and “strategy sizzle.”By Katherine Burger

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

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 Commer-cial, Zurich; VP, corporate business development/IT, Safeco (2004-2007); Accen-ture (1993-2004)

Education: University of Minne-sota, St. Thomas, BA in business management, accounting, finance

Off the job: Arendt says she’s “always wired — I’ve got to have the latest technology and test it before any of the business leaders come to me and say they want it.”

“You’re only as

successful as the

colleagues you

work with.”

@kathyburger

November 2013 17

mission is around enabling the strategy and providing the flexible sys-tems 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 can’t 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 underwrit-ing and policy processing [systems], all the way to the back end,” she says. “Then you’ve got all the data and analytics in support of every single process underpinning the strategic programs.”

Business/IT CooperationSo far, migration to a single global claims system (Accenture’s 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 part-nership 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 proj-ects, 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 Ar-

endt, “Along the way we identify quick wins to add incremental busi-ness value.” One such recent win was the launch of an iPad-based risk engineering app, developed in conjunction with Cognizant.

This also is where XL’s 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 didn’t 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 2012-2013, we went from innovating through a central team to innovating with project teams,” she says. “We’re trying to take the same approach and embed that further into the organization.”

It’s more than the familiar “deliver on time and at budget” mandate, although Arendt’s organization consistently has done so throughout the transformation. She explains, “All of the goals for my IT organiza-tion are aligned with achieving business outcomes, and then taking the next step, around the benefits we’re 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. “It’s one thing building out a system; it’s another thing putting the right train-ing, support and accountability in place so end users can successfully leverage the new technology. Your return on investment will be mar-ginalized if you don’t get that right.” p

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Amica 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 differ-

entiating 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. Power’s 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, adver-tising 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. Some-times those are your best references. From our perspective, we’re trying to promote our financial strength and our strong relationships with customers.”

During Moreau’s tenure at Amica, many of his IT initiatives have revolved around sup-porting the company’s high standards for customer service and satisfaction. But that means more than just exploring new technologies. The IT backbone of Amica’s service proposition has its roots in a transformation effort many years in the making.

In 2005, Amica was an early adopter of Guidewire’s 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

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Building Local PrideAmica 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 MoreauSenior 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

“We’re trying to

promote our

financial strength

and our strong

relationships with

customers.”

November 2013 19

initial decision, Moreau says, put Amica ahead of the pack.“We needed to make sure the run side of the business was as effi-

cient 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 ad-ministration system, PolicyCenter was the choice — after a thorough selection process. In late August of this year, Amica rolled out Policy-Center in some initial states with its auto line.

“It takes years to move away from a legacy policy system, but you’re seeing more and more companies go down that road,” Moreau says. “You have to take that view if you’re 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 inde-pendently, 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 we’re right in the middle of it with two key core systems: policy and billing,” he says. “It’s a large investment in resources and time to make it happen, even with a pack-age. But the system is architected for integration and built for mainte-nance, 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.”

That’s 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 ex-pectations from a self-service perspective?”

Mapped OutTo manage all these projects, Moreau and his team developed a road

map of necessary capabilities and the timeline for delivery. This re-quired tight business-IT alignment. Amica’s leadership is tuned in to the benefits of modernization and fully supports completing the journey.

“I’m 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 Amica’s 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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When he’s not managing Allstate’s IT as executive VP of technology and opera-tions, 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 com-pany, Intelsat; a division of General Motors; and immediately before coming to Allstate, as CIO of the bank Wells Fargo. He’s become adept at identifying the similar ways in which the industries he’s 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 it’s 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 Gupta’s two-plus years at Allstate (Northbrook, Ill.), he has presided over a sea change in the insurer’s 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 what’s 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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Adding Seats To The TableAllstate technology head Suren Gupta revamped the company’s IT strategy to facilitate greater customer lifetime value.By Nathan Golia @NateG_InsTech

Suren GuptaExecutive 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.”

November 2013 21

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 experi-ence,” 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 um-brella 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 you’re changing your lifestyle, I as an agent should be able to advise on how I can protect you bet-ter,” he says. “The whole notion of being able to cross-sell and upsell is near and dear to my heart. That’s 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. That’s where the rubber hits the road for tech — it’s where tech brings the value-added information that our customers are looking for.”

Close To The BusinessBut the thrill of playing with advanced technologies is tempered by

the realities of insurance IT infrastructure, according to Gupta. “We ab-solutely 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 Allstate’s businesses. He created a layer of divisional CIOs, each re-

sponsible for a different line of business at Allstate, who integrate with working groups for horizontal IT capabilities such as infra-structure, 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 Allstate’s 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. It’s 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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November 2013 22

as a whole is encouraged to crowdsource solutions to business problems.

“We’ve got a really well-defined strategy in how we support our business,” Gupta says. “And we have a price-less asset in our agencies — that’s 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: It’s not so much about shifting all customer inter-actions to digital channels; rather, it’s 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 [Allstate’s usage-based 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 cus-tomers with a better protection plan.”

And in a colossally competitive arena like P&C insur-ance, 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 2013 Suren Gupta

Focus On The CustomerGreg ClancySenior VP and CIO, Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance

In the decade since he joined the writer of farm, personal lines and life, 2012 Elite 8 award winner Greg Clancy, Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance’s se-

nior VP and CIO, has completely remade his firm’s IT organization and was responsible for replacing the insurer’s primary systems. He’s remaining busy this year with four important areas of focus that include revamping front-end systems, introducing new products and imple-menting new software.

“We are focusing on our customer-facing systems involving elec-tronic applications and signatures in both the P&C and life companies,” Clancy notes. “We’re also working to improve customer access to policy documents and on paperless document delivery.” Clancy’s team

November 2013 23www.insurancetech.com

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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

Onward And Upward

also is retooling documents with new document-creation software.Another big area of concentration is dealing with regulatory changes

that mainly affect Indiana Farm Bureau’s life company. And finally, Clancy’s group is creating new commercial products.

Big Innovations From A Small Insurer Graeme BoddyCIO, Builders Mutual

For the past five years, Raleigh, N.C.-based Builders Mutual Insurance Co. CIO Graeme Bod-dy’s IT team was driven by geographical expan-

sion and major systems renovation activities, making radical changes to many of the carrier’s processes.

“I’ve 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. “Build-

ELITE 8 2012: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

November 2013 24

ers Mutual is incredibly agile and incredibly inventive. This means that we’ll always have more opportunities than there are people and money to do things. But at the same time, I’m never going to get bored.”

Boddy says he now runs the mail room as well as the insurer’s imag-ing capabilities. “This is only because to be able to use those effec-tively, 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 Boddy’s 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. “We’re seeing our paper channel dry up and the e-commerce channel be-coming the normal way of doing business right now. We’ve had to re-ally 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. “I’m not sure that every company really does.”

Ready For GrowthSusan J. GueliSenior VP and CIO, Nationwide Financial

When 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 team’s efforts to increase em-

ployee engagement and motivation, as well as the benefits of simpli-fying 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.

“We’re 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 InitiativesMichael FergangCIO, Grange Insurance

Grange Insurance CIO Michael Fergang has not let up the pace of his group’s activities since winning the 2012 Elite 8 award. On the

contrary, under his direction, Grange Insurance’s IT department is having another busy — and success-ful — year.

And Fergang’s IT group also reached several mile-stones in the past 12 months. For instance, Grange’s small commercial system is complete. “I’m proud to say that we’re seeing 127% growth beyond what our plan had been, and it was an ambitious plan,” he says.

Many projects are in various stages. Fergang’s group is in the process

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ELITE 8 2012: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

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www.insurancetech.com November 2013 25

of building out Grange’s new auto product and is roll-ing out its new document automation system, from HP Exstream. Fergang’s group also recently completed an agency technology road map.

In addition, Fergang says his department is “plow-ing 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 initia-tive to expand the amount of data in its warehouse.

“We’re not undertaking any huge initiatives like im-plementing new core systems,” Fergang says. “But we continue to peel the onion to see if there’s something our group can do to make us a better organization.”

Change Is A ConstantThree of Insurance & Technology’s 2012 Elite 8 honor-ees have moved on from their previous positions. Sal Abano, who had been senior VP and CIO of New York-based 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 Lib-erty 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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Karl Uphoff, CIO, Commercial Insurance, Chartis Insurance

Andy Wood, SVP, CIO, Wilton Re

SALES CONTACTS— INFORMATIONWEEK FINANCIAL SERVICESAdvertising Sales Office 240 W. 35th Street, 8th Floor New York, NY 10001

National Sales Director Matt Kingham [email protected] 212-600-3084

West Coast Matt Payne [email protected] 415-947-6307

Sales Assistant Joseph Van Scyoc [email protected] 212-600-3387

SALES CONTACTS—EVENTSSenior Director, Events Robyn Duda [email protected] 212-600-3046

Senior Event Manager Joseph Marks [email protected] 212-600-3058

ACCOUNT SERVICES AND PRODUCTIONAccount Coordinator Amanda Waller [email protected] 516-562-5583

Production Manager Adeline Cannone [email protected] 516-562-7673

AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENTAudience Marketing Manager John Slesinski [email protected]

UBM TECHPaul Miller, CEO Marco Pardi, President, Events Scott Mozarsky, Pesident, Media and Partner Solutions Kelley Damore, Chief Community Officer David Michael, Chief Information Officer Simon Carless, EVP, Game & App Development and Black Hat Lenny Heymann, EVP, New Markets Angela Scalpello, SVP, People & Culture

EDITORIAL

Editorial Director Katherine Burger [email protected] 212-600-3062

Senior Editor Nathan Golia [email protected] 212-600-3048

Staff Writer Zarna Patel [email protected] 212-600-3118

ART

Design Central Sr. Art Director Debee Rommel [email protected]