2011 Insurance IT All-Star: John Campbell

Changes in the economy also have affected what IT leaders are trying to accomplish.

"If you look back at the 10-year period from 2001 to today, we've had a couple of market crashes," he says. "The way companies have had to adapt to the economic climate is something we've never faced before. IT in a financial services-type corporation is really an enabler of what businesses have to do, so we've had to keep up with fast-paced changes and help companies adapt to a much different economic climate than they've ever faced before. The challenges of an IT leader today are much more complex than they were 20 years ago."

Campbell believes that has changed the role of the IT leader to one where leadership has become more important than technical knowledge.

 "I can't even keep up with all the technology changes. For a CIO, it's leadership, direction, and focus that need to be provided."

Campbell has been in the insurance business for over 35 years. Prior to joining American Modern 12 years ago, he spent 18 years with Guardian Royal Exchange (GRE) Insurance and before that he was with a small regional insurer called the Midwestern Group that GRE purchased.

Campbell got the opportunity to develop and run the systems, move into management, and be responsible for more than just IT. GRE was a London-based worldwide insurer and Campbell went on to become part of GRE's global IT board and strategy committee. Eventually GRE regionalized around the globe and Campbell was responsible for IT for the U.S., Canada, and South America.

He went into consulting in 1998 and played a leadership role at American Modern, where he helped put together an analysis of the carrier's IT organization and strategy for supporting the business plan. He also worked as a member of a team to develop a roadmap for technology and business transformation. American Modern hired him as CIO in 1999.

American Modern's parent at the time was the Midland Company. The company was later bought by Munich Re.

"I've come full circle," says Campbell. "I went from a small regional insurer to a British global company to a mid-sized family-run specialty company back to a global company."

For Campbell, working for a corporate entity that primarily deals in reinsurance has brought challenges to educate them on how the primary insurance market operates in the U.S.

"It's not just an IT issue," he says. "Munich Re management has come to understand that there are significant differences between requirements in the reinsurance and US primary insurance markets.  But, the challenge comes in adequately anticipating, identifying and defining those differences both in IT and other aspects of the business."

Since taking charge of American Modern's IT operations, Campbell has helped lead the specialty lines carrier through a transformation enabled by the technology that IT delivered.

"This was a company that had homegrown legacy COBOL applications for a Unisys DMS2 database environment," says Campbell. "They had done a wonderful job, but the business model and the products offered had changed dramatically and the technology hadn't changed with it."

Campbell and his management team helped transform the IT department and the carrier's applications to where American Modern now writes Internet-based applications and makes its policy administration processes accessible to its agents over a secure Internet portal.

The project had various deliverables along the way that generated benefits, which could then fund the next set of deliverables, according to Campbell. American Modern is still transforming from a legacy set of systems to more modern systems.

"We have a significant amount of Java development," says Campbell. "We still have some COBOL in the back end, but all Java in the front end systems. We transformed everything from the infrastructure—hardware and software—to the development environments, and the skill sets of the people involved, while partnering with the business along the way."

Campbell credits the business units for providing the leadership needed to help make the changes happen.

"It's really quite transformational what this company has gone through the last 10 years," he says. "It's still going on. We talk about the journey and people ask how you can keep a project going so long. Well it's a series of projects that follows a roadmap and is supported by a robust business case. The roadmap gives us opportunities along the way to deviate."

For example, when American Modern began this transformation the carrier didn't write motorcycle insurance, but along the way an opportunity came along to buy a book of motorcycle business.

"We had to pause along this journey and build all the applications to support the motorcycle book of business," says Campbell. "The roadmap we put in place gave us the opportunity to take checkpoints and see if we still wanted to go in that direction. Without that we probably would have been blind to opportunities and maybe not taken advantage of them. It's a curse and a benefit at the same time to have something running this long."

Campbell is glad American Modern started its legacy transformation early, particularly when he looks around and sees so many other insurers just making the initial steps in that direction. 

"I think in five years a lot of insurance companies will be going through legacy replacement," he says. "Not that it will be the hot news anymore. It's hard work. My experience here is it's not for the faint-hearted."

Among other technology changes he see affecting the industry over the next five years, Campbell believes social networking could be a game-changer.

"No one knows if it is selling more policies, helping to settle claims, improving brands or just what the benefits are," he says.

But Campbell feels the power of the consumer is being exhibited through social media to change opinions and even lead the discussion on insurance topics.

"In some ways I could even imagine social media being involved in product design," he says. "That easily will be a hot technology for another five years."