BY G. BARRY KLEIN, CPCU, CLU

This newly appointed CIO took a global route to Peoria.

The new year brought a new job for Piyush Singh, CPCU. InJanuary, RLI Corporation promoted the longtime IT professional tochief information officer, bringing a distinctly internationalflavor to this uniquely American specialty carrier.

Born and raised in India, Singh obtained both his bachelors andmasters degrees in the computer field and joined Citicorp in 1988as a consultant in its offshore operation there, auditing bank IToperations. The next year he was part of a similar operation atAustralia & New Zealand Bank, which involved internationaltravel in working for its business entities.
In 1992, Price Waterhouse recruited me to work on a largeconsulting project for the government of Jamaica, he continues,describing the project as automating the National Housing Trustsreimbursement system (similar to the Social Security system in theU.S.). This assignment was followed by an implementation of aninsurance policy administration system for a Jamaican insurancecarrier. Kingston was a great place to live for a young marriedcouple, he recalls fondly. Even though its a small island, you cango somewhere different virtually every weekend of the year.

With a young family, though, it turned out to be not as good alocale as the United States, Singh says, so he jumped at the chanceto join Peoria, Ill.-based RLI when he was recruited in 1994. RLIshowed me the cornfields that were similar to the sugar-cane fieldsin Jamaica, but I forgot to look for comparable beaches, he quips.While leaving a yearlong summery location for one with a sometimesharsher climate held some challenges, he asserts raising a familyin the heartland of America was worth it.

At $800 million in premium, RLI is one of the better-known andmore successful carriers in a small, unique cadrea niche-market,product-focused insurance company. RLI got its start as ReplacementLens Insurance Company, but we dont write that product anymore,notes Singh. Still, the company has remained true to that originalspecialty focus, always looking for niche areas. Today, RLI writesvarious products, such as in-home business packages and individualumbrellas, through both retail independent agents and wholesalemanaging general agents. IT is centralized in Peoria, but theunderwriting is decentralized throughout the country with 16physical locations stretching from Honolulu, Hawaii, toGlastonbury, Conn. Singh is responsible for 68 of RLIs 600employees, who are organized into three distinct divisionssystemsdevelopment, enterprise technology support, and enterprisecomputing servicebecause of the different skills and focusesinvolved.

Among other initiatives, Singh is spearheading RLIs Six Sigmamethodology. Our pilot projects currently are going on, he says,and we already can see tremendous benefits. Once the pilots arecompleted, we plan to extend it to the company, carefully choosingthe areas of focus. He describes Six Sigma as being a statisticalmeasure of quality, and what it brings to an organization is afocus on delivering value at an optimal cost to the customerbothinternal and external. We have a customer focus and a businessprocess focus, and this will help us improve both by takinginefficiencies out of the companys business processes.

RLI takes a hard-nosed, practical approach to IT, Singh says,avoiding undertakings that may be nice but not necessarywhat hecalls airline magazine projectsunless there is a real business needfor them. He cites two examples: Wireless technology would be funto do, he says, but there isnt any cost justification for it inRLIs business environment. Another is the popular 24/7 approach toIT. While many of our systems are, in fact, up 24/7, our goal is tohave the highest possible reliability for our core 16/5 [6 a.m. to10 p.m., CST, Monday to Friday], when the majority of our businessgets done, he adds.

Singh has four major goals:

Single point of entry. Regardless of where data first is enteredinto any system, it then is carried seamlessly to any other system,so there is no duplicate data entry.
Single user interface. Users always get the same Web-basedintuitive interface, regardless of the systems being utilized underthe covers.
Single source of information. Data from various systems areintegrated into data warehouses for consistent and better businessintelligence.
Single source of document repository. Documentsnot just claimsdocumentsare imaged for better electronic backup and fasterretrieval.
When asked about percentage completion on the above, he considersit to be a journey and not a destination. In the current businessenvironment, he explains, things constantly are on the move, and ITcontinuously is working in partnership to be in step with thebusiness environment changes.

Does he miss the heady days of consulting and world travel?Consultants tend to come in, work on a project, and leave, hepoints out. They dont see the whole company, before the project orafterward. Working in the real world is much more satisfying.