This month: Penn National Insurances WilliamJenkins

BY G. BARRY KLEIN, CPCU, CLU

An industry veteran joins Penn National Insurance as theCIO.

Bill Jenkins, former CIO of General Accident and former chairmanof ACORD, joined Penn National Insurance as its CIO inDecember.

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) andpersonal lines (30 percent) insurance in nine states. The companyemploys about 900 people of whom 110 report to Jenkins.

Penn National Insurance is a great place to work and, in myopinion, particularly if youre in IT, Jenkins says. Its an opinionthat isnt his alone. In 2004, a Computerworld survey listed thecompany as one of its 100 Best Places to Work in IT. Managementgives 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 canmake decisions quickly. Its like a breath of fresh air. One of themain reasons the company rates so highly in the IT area, Jenkinsbelieves, is the amount of resources it puts into people. IT folksare motivated more by their ability to learn than by anythingelse.

Jenkins was educated in Philadelphia. He graduated from TempleUniversity with a BA degree in political science. He went on toearn his MS degree from Drexel University, eventually followed byan MBA at St. Josephs University. Self-described as a perennialsophomore, he also earned a CPCU degree from the American Institutefor Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters/Insurance Institute ofAmerica.

He started his career in 1969 in Philadelphia with what turnedout to be the first of two tours of duty at General AccidentInsurance Company. He worked as a systems analyst and stayed forthree years doing a number of different jobs. Leaving for aneight-year hiatus, he went on to be the strategic planning officerfor a large regional bank. It was a great experience. It was theadvent of e-commerce, with electronic funds delivery, and we putthe delivery systems plan in place at the bank and beganimplementing it. Following this, he was the CIO of a localhospital.

In 1981, Jenkins was recruited back to General Accident to setup a new data-quality function and stayed to handle a number ofother data management and project management assignments.Eventually becoming GAs chief information officer, he was there forthe merger with Commercial Union, staying for a year (at whatbecame CGU) to put the post-merger IT integration plan togetherbefore taking the benefit package that was offered to all seniorexecutives.

Upon retiring from CGU, Jenkins formed SolvIT, an IT consultingfirm made up of 10 former CIOs. Graybeards is how he describeshimself and his partners. He was active with SolvIT until beingrecruited to his current position.

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

Although a recent addition to Penn National, Jenkins is fullyengaged in the ongoing and new projects at the company. Werepushing very strongly to finish off our project of moving off ourmainframe legacy systems. Were also moving ahead with a very tightdata integration [data warehouse] project. Jenkins expects toimplement some of the new wireless and Web services technology,especially in the claims and loss control areas. Penn NationalInsurance is very big on security, he says, indicating it has someprojects in that area as well as some regulatory and compliancework to do. Although Penn National is a mutual carrier, Jenkinssays Sarbanes-Oxley is on the radar, specifically referring to anNAIC initiative.

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