This month: Penn National Insurances William Jenkins

BY G. BARRY KLEIN, CPCU, CLU

An industry veteran joins Penn National Insurance as the CIO.

Bill Jenkins, former CIO of General Accident and former chairman of ACORD, joined Penn National Insurance as its CIO in December.

Penn National recruited Jenkins, replacing Jane Koppenheffer, who had left to join a large agency group. Based in Harrisburg, Penn National is a big ($550 million in premium) regional carrier, writing small and medium-size commercial lines (70 percent) and personal lines (30 percent) insurance in nine states. The company employs about 900 people of whom 110 report to Jenkins.

Penn National Insurance is a great place to work and, in my opinion, particularly if youre in IT, Jenkins says. Its an opinion that isnt his alone. In 2004, a Computerworld survey listed the company as one of its 100 Best Places to Work in IT. Management gives a lot of support to IT, Jenkins explains, with the CEO, COO, and CFO all sitting in on major IT meetings and planning sessions. They know how much theyre spending on IT, where its going, and can make decisions quickly. Its like a breath of fresh air. One of the main reasons the company rates so highly in the IT area, Jenkins believes, is the amount of resources it puts into people. IT folks are motivated more by their ability to learn than by anything else.

Jenkins was educated in Philadelphia. He graduated from Temple University with a BA degree in political science. He went on to earn his MS degree from Drexel University, eventually followed by an MBA at St. Josephs University. Self-described as a perennial sophomore, he also earned a CPCU degree from the American Institute for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters/Insurance Institute of America.

He started his career in 1969 in Philadelphia with what turned out to be the first of two tours of duty at General Accident Insurance Company. He worked as a systems analyst and stayed for three years doing a number of different jobs. Leaving for an eight-year hiatus, he went on to be the strategic planning officer for a large regional bank. It was a great experience. It was the advent of e-commerce, with electronic funds delivery, and we put the delivery systems plan in place at the bank and began implementing it. Following this, he was the CIO of a local hospital.

In 1981, Jenkins was recruited back to General Accident to set up a new data-quality function and stayed to handle a number of other data management and project management assignments. Eventually becoming GAs chief information officer, he was there for the merger with Commercial Union, staying for a year (at what became CGU) to put the post-merger IT integration plan together before taking the benefit package that was offered to all senior executives.

Upon retiring from CGU, Jenkins formed SolvIT, an IT consulting firm made up of 10 former CIOs. Graybeards is how he describes himself and his partners. He was active with SolvIT until being recruited to his current position.

Along the way, Jenkins gave eight years of service to ACORD as a board member and as chairman of the board of directors for two of them. Last year, I had the pleasure of working with the Gartner Group, which was a real treat, by the way, putting ACORDs long-term strategic plan together.

Although a recent addition to Penn National, Jenkins is fully engaged in the ongoing and new projects at the company. Were pushing very strongly to finish off our project of moving off our mainframe legacy systems. Were also moving ahead with a very tight data integration [data warehouse] project. Jenkins expects to implement some of the new wireless and Web services technology, especially in the claims and loss control areas. Penn National Insurance is very big on security, he says, indicating it has some projects in that area as well as some regulatory and compliance work to do. Although Penn National is a mutual carrier, Jenkins says Sarbanes-Oxley is on the radar, specifically referring to an NAIC initiative.

Jenkins first item on his to-do list already has been completed: Hit the ground running.

Special Reports /

William Jenkins, Penn National Insurance

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