A glimpse inside the personal technology arsenal and strategies
that empower todays leading insurance IT professionals.
BY ROBERT REGIS HYLE
If opportunity doesnt come knocking on your door, sometimes you have to go looking for it. Barbara Koster, CIO at Prudential Financial, had a love for technology, but after graduating from St. Francis College in Brooklyn, N.Y., the first job she found was in the accounting department at Chase Manhattan Bank. When I graduated, there were not many jobs in technology, so I joined Chase as an accountant, she says.
Koster earned a bachelors degree in business from St. Francis, but she also had a pair of associate degreesone in accounting and one in computer science. Ive always loved technology, she notes. At the time, you could earn a four-year degree on the engineering side of technology but not on the business sidebusiness analysis and programming.
It took her a year to put that technology training to use at the bank. Chase offered a computer training program, and I was accepted into it, she says. It was a nine-month training program, and I came out as a programmer, starting at the bottom as an associate programmer. Koster is happy with the direction her career turned once she moved into technology. I have not regretted it at all, she continues. I was thrilled to be accepted into the Chase program. My first few jobs at Chase were accounting related. I worked on Chases financial systems because I had the accounting background and the technology background. It was really about having the right skills.
Making Her Move
Kosters move to insurance came in 1995, when she joined Prudential as vice president, policy administration and management information systems. Two years later, she was named CIO of Prudentials individual financial services and held that position until moving up to her current role in December 2003. It was in her time with Pruden-tials individual financial services that she found one of her most rewarding professional experiences. I think our LaunchPad project [was the most rewarding], she says. We enabled our field force with technology and the ability to access customer information any time and any place, making it readily available in order to submit applications and insure customers. She adds the LaunchPad project required a lot of work within Prudential, including building new networks, wiring field offices, handing out the technology, training the agents on how to use the technology, and getting the right contact management systems, the right payment systems, and the right application systems.
LaunchPad was a project that utilized all my skills from all the years that had come before, she says. I believe we made a big difference in the way Prudential does business. I consider myself very lucky to have worked on the project and with the wonderful people at Prudential. There were a couple hundred people involved in making this happen, and we all worked together. Thats the beauty of a project like that.
At home, Koster and her family live in a wireless environment. Each one of us needs to use the computer, she says, so you cant have just one. She claims she lives and breathes with three technology toolsher cell phone, her BlackBerry, and her laptop.
Nevertheless, she does dabble in the somewhat unconventional, as well. At the job, we try out some fun things, she indicates. Weve been trying some biometrics, some voice-activated phone dialing. Weve also been working on video at the desktopmore of a same-time instant messaging. But at the end of the day, the three tools I mentioned are the tools I live by day to day.
At the Beach
Koster notes she doesnt have many hobbies, preferring to spend available free time thinking of better ways to use technology. In the business were in, there is not a lot of free time, she says. I love the ocean, so I spend a lot of time, when I can, at our beach home. I really spend a lot of [free] time exploring better ways for the industry to move forward. Im a big proponent and participant in ACORD.
The most enjoyable part of her career, Koster adds, is working with all the people at Prudential. Whether it is on the business side, the marketing side, or the technology side, Prudential employees are very collaborative, she points out. They love to work together. They love to see sales come in the door, help create products, and [utilize their] ability to deliver services to the customer.
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