Michael Paulin is divisional CIO and managing director of IT at AF Group, which encompasses the group’s property/casualty companies. He has overall responsibility for technology strategy and execution. Prior to joining AF Group, he held CIO roles at H.W. Kaufman Group and Burns & Wilcox. He holds BBA and MBA degrees from Grand Valley State University and an MS in computer science from the University of Michigan. He spoke with Novarica in mid-April during the COVID-19 pandemic.
How did the transition to WFH go for your technology team?
The transition was relatively smooth for our company and technology team. Our technology commitment and strategy at AF Group has included numerous business continuity initiatives focused on enabling our users to be productive through a variety of remote work conditions. We were also fortunate that in 2019, we had initiated an internal assessment for evaluating how we could introduce additional flexibility for our employees. That effort gave us a great head start on what we needed to accomplish in the transition from a traditional office setting to a decentralized model.
When the states in which our offices are domiciled began to issue stay-at-home orders, many companies were not prepared. At AF Group, we were able to pivot and return to a productive state in just a fraction of the time it took others. To me, this was critical because many of our insureds count on the checks we distribute to help cover their day-to-day expenses while they recuperate and prepare to return to work. With the COVID-19 pandemic, this dependency has become even greater.
How has your business user community adapted?
I have been extremely pleased with our business community’s adjustment to these new working conditions. In many cases, our internal users have expanded their own technical capabilities, sharing information amongst themselves and essentially raising the level of technical savviness across the company. One of the greatest challenges we’ve been faced with has been the introduction and industry influx of new digital collaboration tools, including free external tools like Zoom.
As software vendors have rushed to provide solutions during these trying times, so too have our employees pushed the envelope in exploring new productivity opportunities. This has strained our software governance process, and I find myself often having to say “no.” In most cases, once we have a chance to discuss with the user their needs, risks, and alternatives, we can find a suitable alternative. While we need to maintain the appropriate controls over the environment, it has been rewarding to see the blossoming excitement and curiosity toward solving everyday challenges. Now that we’re wrapping up our third week under these working conditions, people are settling into their “new norm” and teams are beginning to return to a business-as-usual state.
Do you think the pandemic will re-align your IT strategy going forward?
Like many others, I have a lot of uncertainty around the duration of this event, the downstream economic impacts, and business conditions that we will be challenged with for the rest of 2020. Prior to the COVID-19 event, we were exploring several opportunities to support new growth, diversification, and efficiency. Not knowing how long the impacts of this event will last, we have not stopped these efforts, but for the near term, the overall momentum has slowed down.
At AF Group, we were already working on large initiatives for core policy and billing system modernization as well as a redesign and refresh of our data strategy. These elements of our strategy have not changed, and the efforts remain on track and are moving forward as planned. If I were to call out any changes to our strategy, it would be that we have elevated the prioritization for efforts related to automation, self-service, and business optimization. Given that many of our teams were already somewhat decentralized, we are continuing to have success moving forward our development and delivery of these efforts.
Do you think there’s going to be a greater push toward digital or other types of capabilities based on the experience of the pandemic?
I believe that we will see additional focus on digital solutioning in the way that we engage both across our internal business units and with our customers, whether that’s the agent or the insured. Internally, we are leaning more heavily on self-service capabilities and expanding the use of intelligent processing to assist with several of our internal operations. We are also working to build and expand tools for our agents and insureds. These efforts include digital tools to provide additional servicing and inquiry opportunities. As we look later into the year and toward the future, the industry will see AF Group bring to market new online offerings, an expanded use of SaaS and cloud offerings, as well as new solutioning for inquiry and payments.
Many of these efforts were already on our strategic roadmap. My expectation is that the impacts and our responses to the COVID-19 event will accelerate and potentially drive re-prioritization for these and similar activities. One of the things I love about working with AF Group is that we have always been a relationship- and customer-centric organization. While we focus on building our strengths and successes, our leadership team remains acutely aware of the market and is willing to pivot as necessary to introduce changes or deploy services that will allow us to meet the demands and needs of our customers and employees.
How have you and your team leveraged the Novarica relationship?
My team is regularly researching new opportunities to address the challenges that they’re faced with on a daily basis. Further, as technologists, we recognize that our industry and the tools we use are rapidly evolving. Because of this, they are asking new questions and are in need of industry and technical perspective more than ever before. With so much content available on the web, or biased whitepaper material, I need them to have access to a source for well-researched, trustworthy, thoughtful, and concise information for our industry. I really appreciate Novarica’s insurance focus and how they bring to the table technical and non-technical knowledge on the challenges that we face. Efficiency and time management are of utmost importance. Working with Novarica can save me the time of having to research and aggregate content from multiple sources.
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