Reaching the top of the technology ladder in the insuranceindustry is not often a lesson in “the road less traveled,” butcertainly this year's five all-stars are distinct from oneanother.

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One CIO worked for a quarter-century as a consultant beforemoving to the front lines. Another has spent his entirepostgraduate career with the same company. A third hopped around tomore than a half-dozen companies throughout his career.

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There's nothing cookie-cutter about the 2010 Tech Decisions ITAll Stars. This year's team includes Doug Allen, vice president anddirector of IT, State Auto Insurance; Mike Anselmo, senior vicepresident and CIO, Narragansett Bay Insurance; Brian O'Connell,senior vice president and CIO, The Hartford Financial ServicesGroup; Greg Ricker, CIO, Strickland Insurance Group; and WayneUmland, executive vice president and CIO, Glatfelter InsuranceGroup. (Also, check out the 2009 IT All-Stars and the 2008 All-Stars and the 2007All-Stars.)

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Here are their stories.

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* * *

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DougAllen's always been a team player–even in golf, which manyobservers consider the most individual of sports.

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Now the vice president and director of IT at Columbus,Ohio-based State AutoInsurance, Allen was a member of the golf team at The OhioState University that won the 1979 NCAA championship and sentseveral players to the pro tour.

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“I learned a lot of lessons about being on successful athleticteams,” says Allen. “I learned how coaches are key to attractingand developing talent, how players must challenge and learn fromeach other, and how the support of the institution and thefacilities they provide factor into what makes a championshipteam.”

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Allen believes some of the lifelessons he learned on the golf course at Ohio State have stayedwith him as his career progressed at State Auto.

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Growing up, he also had a passion for computer science, whichwas ultimately the degree he received from Ohio State. Thirty-oneyears later, Allen remains in Columbus, having spent his entirecareer at State Auto. Six years ago he was selected as director ofIT.

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CAREER STARTER

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“From the beginning, State Auto has felt like the rightcompany,” says Allen. “The relationships State Auto has built withits employees, agents, and business partners align with my personalvalues.”

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During his State Auto career, Allen worked for a business unitthat focused on agency management systems. He believes thatexperience helped him understand how carrier technology has to workseamlessly with agency technology.

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“We pay a lot of attention to the effectiveness of ouragent-facing technology and whether it adds value to our businessrelationships with them,” he says.

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Allen relishes the team dynamics and takes pride in building astrong IT team.

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“You have to constantly step back and look at where the team mayhave blind spots or weaknesses, and address them,” he says. “Forthe last several years we've had an IT-wide continuous improvementobjective. It's fun to watch us mature as a group and deliver morevalue to the enterprise. I find many parallels to golf. You canfeel as though you're on top of your game, but there are alwaysparts you have to work harder at. The same is true in IT.”

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SEAT AT THE TABLE

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State Auto has experienced a great deal of expansion in recentyears through acquisitions, including a recent move into specialtyinsurance lines. Allen has enjoyed the increased responsibilitybecause he feels State Auto, from the CEO down, understands thevalue of IT and how it enables the business. “We always have a seatat the table and can feel the pulse of the organization,” hesays.

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“As part of our business growth and efficiency initiatives,we've developed an enterprise architecture discipline so we'rebetter able to leverage IT investments across our growingfootprint,” continues Allen. “We're focused on delivering newcapabilities to the company and retiring business applications thatdon't line up with our architectural blueprints.”

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COMPANY MATURES

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In addition to building a stronger IT team, Allen has seen thecompany mature in governance and what eventually gets into the ITpipeline. “There is more rigor and accountability on the businessside to make sure we're picking the right projects that align withour business drivers and the capacity of IT to address theprojects,” says Allen.

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“We've done a lot in IT over the past three years to understandwhere we're consuming our capacity. We have very good metrics aboutour Run, Grow, and Transform spending across all IT associates,” hesays. “With good data, we make more informed decisions on startingnew initiatives as well as stopping those that don't line upwell.”

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Other aspects of State Auto's game that have been sharpenedrecently are the overall IT delivery and core infrastructure,explains Allen.

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“Our IT business office has evolved so project delivery,financial and asset management, and human capital development aredone well,” he says. “We've also strengthened our coreinfrastructure so that the business has the modern foundation andcapabilities to grow on.”

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Allen says he likes the evolution of IT at State Auto and whatthe future holds.

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“Most of all, I like being part of this team,” he says.

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* * *

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Everyone looks for their niche in life. For MikeAnselmo, senior vice president and CIO of the Narragansett Bay Insurance Company(NBIC), working with start-up companies and turn-around projectshas become his forte.

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“I like change,” he says. “I like to make sure companies are setup for growth.”

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Anselmo explains he gravitates to those types ofopportunities.

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“I like coming to a company and try to put together a strategyand then execute it,” he says. “That doesn't necessarily meanchanging staffs or removing legacy systems, but making it socompanies become more agile and can set themselves up for a growthpattern.”

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He believes NBIC already is headed in that direction.

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“We have a really good push togrow the numbers and a lot of it is because of the technology weare building,” says Anselmo. “We are going to have the best policyadministration system and the best IT architecture around. Thestars are aligned. We have good capital, we have great technologywe are leading with, we have a good team, we have a good product,and we have the backing of our board.”

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Anselmo is the chief architect of the technology plan at NBICand understands the pressure to get that right.

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“If you don't have the architecture out there you might thinkyou want to go in one direction, but it won't work,” he says.“Everyone has to be pushing toward that architecture and you haveto push your team so they understand the big picture. Otherwise, in18 months you won't be as agile as you thought you were going tobe.”

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SITUATIONS

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Anselmo is a strong believer in education. In fact, while livingin New Jersey, he served as an adjunct professor teachingtechnology at colleges. That has led him to become part ofSituational Leadership training.

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“I guess what's important to me is the multitasking thing,” hesays. “I'm not just one type of manager. I believe I can lead,depending on the situation, and that's what you learn [withSituational Leadership]. With my background, I like to think I cantrain people or at least help them understand what needs to bedone. With that training, it's important that the situationalleader understands when it is necessary to direct and to coach, andwhat to advise.”

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Another connection to education comes with his long-timeassociation with Junior Achievement.

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“I've been involved in Junior Achievement since the late 1980sin New Jersey,” he says. “When I took this opportunity [with NBIC],I was appointed to the Junior Achievement board in Rhode Island.Junior Achievement is special to me because I like teaching andtraining people. It's very fulfilling. One of the things I learnedas a kid was they never taught us practical responsibility inschool, so I try to go into that kind of session and put atechnology question around it. We have some fun with it.”

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Anselmo started with NBIC in February of 2009. His first taskwas to evaluate the situation. By June of that year he was able topresent a strategy to the board of directors and the management onwhere the company should be going on a technology basis.

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After receiving board and management approval, Anselmo kickedoff the process known throughout the company as Project Apex.

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“It's a technology transformation,” he says. “Because the starswere aligned with the technology, the capital, and our team, we canuse technology to its fullest. The strategy was to go with abest-of-breed approach, and we selected a claims system and apolicy administration system. We did a few of our own things, aswell.”

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OWN PLATFORM

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Anselmo felt it was important for NBIC to move forward on itsown platform.

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“We couldn't grow as much as we would want with the [older]platform,” he says. “That set the stage for [NBIC] to grow, to hitsome significant numbers in premium, which we are movingtoward.”

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The first step in the transformation was a new Web site andagency portal, which Anselmo describes as a single place for all ofNBIC's agents to go to.

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“It put everybody on one face plate,” says Anselmo.

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Next up was a complete corporate financial program–generalledger, accounts receivable, fixed assets.

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“We got rid of all our legacy systems,” says Anselmo. “It wasall integrated.”

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Next was a new data warehouse, which Anselmo explains is builtinto a better process.

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“It's the actual data source for all our information,” hesays.

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In August, NBIC unveiled a new claims system.

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“It's available anytime, anywhere,” he says. “Log onto theportal and you can access the system anytime.”

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Next up is the biggest challenge for NBIC and Anselmo–the policyadministration system.

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“Right now the plan is for new business to be on it by Sept. 15,and after October we're going to do an agency migration,” he says.“What's nice about the system is we'll have seamless access. Itallows us to do straight-through processing and it putsunderwriting right in the hands of the CSR and the independentagent. [The system] allows agents to quote and issue a policy andmake any changes right there. It reduces our expenses so ourunderwriters can focus on building the business, not processing thebusiness.”

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* * *

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Many former CIOs eventually make a switch to the world ofconsulting, but the list of consultants who move into leadershippositions with high-profile companies such as The Hartford is a short one.

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Brian O'Connell, senior vice president and CIO of The HartfordFinancial Services Group, might be at the top of that short list.He spent a quarter century with Accenture before joining TheHartford
in 2007.

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“What I like to tell people is I think I have the dream job forsomebody who spent 25 years in consulting,” says O'Connell. “Wehave a big transformation agenda, and I have the opportunity to doeverything that for 25 years I tried to advise and influenceclients to do. So in many ways what I did in consulting hasprepared me well for my role and the situation here at TheHartford.”

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O'Connell admits to being biased,but he believes the right kind of consulting background can preparesomeone for an operational role in a company.

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“The breadth of experiences I got in consulting gave me exposureto infrastructure, strategy, application development, andarchitecture,” he says. “It makes me well qualified to deal withthose issues in my current role. I think it's an ideal kind ofbackground to have.”

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O'Connell understands there are people better at giving advicethan managing people, but he doesn't feel he falls into thatcategory.

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“I have a passion for and love managing people,” he says. “WhenI was in consulting that was one of the things I most enjoyed aboutmy job–managing teams and leading people. That fits very well withmy current role because it's not just about getting my work done;it's about leading the organization.”

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FINANCIAL TURMOIL

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The financial turmoil surrounding the industry has beendaunting, but O'Connell remains positive.

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“What I like to say to people in my organization is a goodcrisis is a terrible thing to waste,” he says.

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When he joined The Hartford in 2007, the company had one of itsbest years ever, according to O'Connell, but as the economic crisisunfolded, some financial flexibility at The Hartford went away.

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“On the positive side it created a burning platform for change,”he says. “Whenever you are trying to drive change there's always acertain amount of resistance, and a lot of that resistance has beenpushed aside, if you will, by the fact we have a platform to getthese things done. That's helped to enable what we are trying to doand knock down some of the resistance you might typically face inthis kind of situation.”

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O'Connell explains there are several components to the IT agendatoday, starting with simplifying the environment.

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“The Hartford grew up as kind of an entrepreneurial companywhere the business is operated somewhat independently, and thatincluded the technology functions,” he says. “Now we are trying tolook at things more holistically. If we have three applications todo the same thing or two different types of infrastructure, can wesimplify that to get to one? The simplification of the overallenvironment is the
top priority.”

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The company also wants to modernize the environment.

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“Today we are in a situation where there is new technologycoming out at a rapid pace, particularly in the infrastructurespace,” says O'Connell. “This provides for a great opportunity forcost savings and efficiencies and also an opportunity to make ourcompany more eco-friendly. We are trying to use those technologieswhile we drive our simplification agenda to also modernizethings.”

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SATISFACTION LEVEL

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O'Connell feels there was a fair amount of dissatisfaction withIT at The Hartford when he joined the company. He described therelationship between the business and the IT organization at thattime as “not great.”

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What he feels helped him, though, was he initially was broughtto The Hartford to be in charge of IT at the life company. When hewas asked to lead the enterprise, he also assumed leadership on theP&C side for nine months while looking for a new leaderthere.

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“By working with the business leaders for the life and theP&C companies, I built close working relationships with bothleaders,” says O'Connell. “That allowed me to build credibility anda solid relationship with both organizations and change the toneand the nature of the discourse that was going on.”

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* * *

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GregRicker gained 15 years of experience working in IT forNationwide and enjoyed his time in the Midwest but yearned for achange in climate. When Strickland InsuranceGroup came calling in 1999, Ricker packed his bags and headedto North Carolina.

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“One of the things that attracted me to the Stricklandorganization is they are very strong proponents of theentrepreneurial spirit,” says Ricker. “It's allowed us to getcreative and not have some of the restrictions a rigid corporateculture imposes.”

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Among the technology projects Strickland has accomplished overthe last decade are straight-through processing, imaging, automatedworkflow, and rules-based processing.

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“We did these years ahead of when our competition did them,”says Ricker. “I just read one of my competitors is just now goingto a Web-based policy issuance product. We already have our entireagency force on a Web-based issuance product. It kind of motivatesus that we have the flexibility and the opportunity to be creative.As a result, we're doing some good things.”

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One thing that attracted Rickerto Strickland–along with the climate–is Strickland had just soldoff its non-standard private passenger automobile business. Inaddition to taking that line off the books, the company that boughtit purchased Strickland's entire IT infrastructure.

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That meant Strickland was leasing time on the old platform untilthe company was able to get a new platform up and running.

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“That's basically every IT guy's dream,” says Ricker.

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BACK IN THE DAY

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It was the late 1990s, and while every other IT department inthe country was focusing on Y2K, Strickland and Ricker were puttingtogether an IT road map.

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“We were able to lay out what we wanted to do and the vision wehad,” he says. “I took a three- to five-year IT road map to theowners of the company. We talked about how to fund it and off wewent. Not having to do that legacy migration was a greatopportunity for us.”

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Because Strickland had sold off the non-standard business andthe technology to go with it, the company had money available toinvest.

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“We were able to be creative with things,” says Ricker. “Italmost was like a start-up company.”

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The timing of the changes was “absolutely impeccable,” accordingto Ricker. The hard-market run from 2003 to 2005 triggered enormousgrowth for Strickland.

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“We grew the company from $4 million to $100 million in fiveyears,” he says. “There was no way we could have sustained thatgrowth and created a profit each year if we did not have keytechnology components in place.”

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Good timing gave Strickland the opportunity to succeed, butRicker believes the key factor for the carrier was making the rightdecisions with technology. The company went with a real-time policyprocessing system, getting away from batch. Other changes includedWeb-based rating and a data warehouse.

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The more recent financial issues facing the industry led to manyinsurers making cuts in IT spending, but Ricker claims Stricklandkept its IT spending at a consistent level over the last threeyears.

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“When the market started changing in 2006 we knew the cost ofdoing business with Strickland Insurance Group was going to be ofparamount importance to the agents,” he says.

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In 2006 and 2007, Strickland made a strong push to get Web-basedrating to the agencies that would allow producers to obtain a ratequickly, not have to retain rate data or policy forms in theiroffice, and instead rely on Strickland's systems to do that workfor them.

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“When we showed our agents it was easier, faster, and moreefficient to rate, quote, and bind business with us, they startedtaking notice,” says Ricker.

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KEEP 'EM COMING

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More changes kept coming. Ricker believes Strickland was thefirst E&S carrier to have a Web service available for ratingstarting in 2008.

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“At a time when everyone was trying to understand what Webservices were, we offered agents the ability to have their Web siteinterface with us for 850 classes of general liability business,”he says. “We've kept our focus on the fact it is easier and cheaperto do business with our company, and we believe the agents areresponding favorably to that. We haven't changed our pricing or ourproduct. But no question the use of our tools is up significantlyfrom what it was 12 to 18 months ago.”

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Internally, Ricker is pushing to strengthen the carrier's datawarehouse, which has been helping Strickland's actuarial andmarketing staffs look at what is going on in an agent's office aswell as determine what classes of business are profitable for thecompany.

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“Online rating supplies us the leading indicator of what's goingon in the agency office today,” says Ricker. “As an organization,we're doing a better job of looking at these indicators. From astrategic level, if we are having high hit-ratios on classes, whyis that? Did something change in the marketplace? Is our productsignificantly different from what our competitor offers? We'regoing to build more tools that will look at how we can use thequote statistics and hit ratios to allow us to better run ourbusiness.”

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Ricker is a believer in the philosophy where you get what youinspect, not what you expect.

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“The more you peel away at these statistics, the more you aregoing to be able to improve your business,” he says. “I'm hoping wecan remove as much of the guesswork from our business aspossible.”

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* * *

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Wayne Umland joined Glatfelter InsuranceGroup at just the right time.

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“When I got here [in 1997] the company had just changed itsmodel for doing business,” he recalls.

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Glatfelter had been a traditional managing general agency butdecided to be more independent and to act more like a carrier withnew partners. Among the first steps earlier in the 90s was theformation of an offshore captive reinsurance company.

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“We're really more like a carrier,” he says. “When we have badresults, we feel it. We're not just getting commission income likea traditional MGA might.”

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When Umland joined the company,he also discovered the infrastructure was not the best.

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“We had really outgrown [many of the systems] by the time I gothere,” he says. “I got the opportunity to transform this place andmake it something completely different.”

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Since 1997, Glatfelter has acquired three other programs and twoother agencies and assimilated them into the infrastructure. Thecompany has grown in terms of breadth of offerings and retail andwholesale operations, explains Umland.

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With the mergers and acquisitions, Glatfelter made a decision tocentralize the technology platform at company headquarters in York,Pa.

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“The way we've done the acquisitions is we've moved businesswhere we can at renewal onto our platform rather than trying toconvert [the old systems] and make it fit,” says Umland. “From aninfrastructure perspective it's been pretty easy because we haven'tbeen saddled with a lot of legacy systems. We've been able to moveall the back-office support and structure here to York and have theagencies and employees access it over Citrix or do things over theWeb. We haven't had the legacy issues, which has made it a loteasier.”

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SCARY TIME

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The industry has gone through three major tests during Umland'stenure with Glatfelter. First came the Y2K scare.

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“The Y2K fear had everybody shaking in their boots,” he says.“But it was a good exercise because it got people to realize theintricacies of what [systems] they had.”

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Next came the post-9/11 stress on the industry, with issues suchas putting terrorism coverage in policies and the need for disasterrecovery/business continuity plans.

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“It made us realize that as a small company if there was adisaster or a terrorism strike Glatfelter would be at the bottom ofthe list [for recovery] because we are so small,” says Umland. “Weended up building our own facility after an acquisition of anagency in Stockton, Calif. We built a completely redundant datacenter using virtual machines. It was a lesson for us as a smallcompany to be less dependent on one of the national disasterrecovery facilities and take care of ourselves.”

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Glatfelter has an IT staff of just 50 people, which Umlandexplains stretches the IT department at times. “We've put a staffonboard that can take care of those things,” he says. “For acompany our size we've been able to take care of some of the newertechnology that larger companies have not been able to deal withyet.”

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As for the more recent financial problems facing the industryand the country in general, Umland believes Glatfelter's positionas a niche marketer has been fortunate.

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“We've been strong in the market, we're good at what we do, andwith one of our programs we have had a retention rate of up to 97percent,” says Umland. “When you have that loyalty behind you andhaven't taken advantage of your customers when the market wasdifferent, and then cutting price when the market flipped, you canmaintain a consistent philosophy.”

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For Glatfelter that philosophy is to sell the best benefits andthe best products in their space, provide ancillary services topolicyholders to help them get better at loss prevention/riskcontrol, and remain steady with pricing.

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“In this mosr recent market, revenues haven't grown as they havein the past, but we haven't been faced with making significantcuts,” says Umland. “We haven't had to face those tough decisionsthat other companies have faced as far as cutting IT staff orreducing capital spending.”

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Glatfelter realized that if it expected to emerge strong out ofthe recession, the company needed to invest so it didn't have toplay catch-up later.

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“We continued to implement enterprisewide systems rather thancutting back on new initiatives,” he says. “I think we are betterfor it.”

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NO MORE SILOS

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Umland reports Glatfelter will spread out advances in imaging,electronic workflow, underwriting, and claims over the course ofthe next year. Glatfelter also completely redid the policyadministration system with one from LexisNexis for its programbusiness. In addition, the company formed an agents' technologycouncil, combining a group of agents together to advise the carrieron what they want to see moving forward.

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“Glatfelter had always looked at its programs as silos,” saysUmland. “From a technology perspective, that doesn't really help.We formed the technology council with agents from all programs andbuilt a producer portal. It has started to take off in terms ofelectronic functionality, download to agency management systems,and real-time upload.”

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When Umland joined Glatfelter the IT department was an“afterthought,” he says, “and not a strategic partner with thebusiness units. IT rarely initiated strategic projects. Over time,I think we have developed a clear alignment with the businessunits,” he says. “IT is now sitting at the table with the board.We're taking a lead in terms of bringing technological solutions tothe business and showing [the business units] what they can do ifthey choose to do so. We're not dictating and we're not trying tostrong-arm people into jumping into the 21st century, but when[business users] see the improvements that are possible it's prettyeasy to sell them.”