Prior to joining Prudential, she was with Chase Manhattan Bank in a variety of technology-related positions. She is a graduate of St. Francis College in Brooklyn, N.Y., with degrees in business administration, computer technology, and accounting. She has been a featured speaker at a variety of industry forums and is active in industry organizations, including ACORD, where she sits on the board of directors.

As CIO of Prudentials individual financial services, she was responsible for initiating LaunchPad, the groundbreaking program that put a laptop and a suite of software into the hands of the companys entire field force. With the third rollout of laptops for its agents now under way, Koster shares what LaunchPad has done for the carriers agents and their customers and comments on several of the other important aspects of her new job.

Tech Decisions: In an interview you did several years ago, you said e-commerce would be one area of insurance technology that would see the most advances over the next decade. Do you still feel that way?

Koster: Yes, I do. I think our client base is moving more and more into integrating the use of technology into their lives. I dont believe [the Internet] is helping from a standpoint of selling products. But from a standpoint of serving our clients, I think it still is the wave of the future, whether it is making information available about their policies, allowing customers to change their information, or allowing them to pay their monthly bills. All of those areas still are excellent uses of the Web and will facilitate us giving great customer service.

Tech Decisions: Is e-commerce growing at the rate you expected? Slower? Faster?

Koster: I think its moving as I expected. How quickly the customers shift is what drives how quickly we shift. Right now we have multiple capabilities. We have telephone centers clients can call into, we have Web access all clients can have if they so desire, and we still have the good old U.S. mail. We may image it and put it through a workflow, but if a client sends us a letter, we respond. We are working the way the clients want us to work.

Tech Decisions: Tell us about LaunchPad, Prudentials laptop program for its agents. How successful a program has this been for the company? Is wireless technology going to be a part of the program?

Koster: LaunchPad has been very successful. Were coming up on our third rollout of laptops. This go-around will not be using wireless technology, not because it isnt available, but we dont have broad enough access across the country. Some of our agents are in remote areas, and not everyone is in a metropolitan area, so wireless still has a little way to go to be available to everyone. At this point, the agents are getting new laptops, but not wireless. I do think wireless still is very much in our future as it becomes a more stable environment to work in.

Tech Decisions: What other ways is Pru-dential using technology to help keep its agents ahead of the competition?

Koster: Were making the Internet more readily available to our agents for price quoting and information gathering as they prepare to go to their clients with either new sales, reviews of current portfolios, or reaching out to a new client. Weve made more information available to agents on their laptops so everything is right there at their fingertips when they are talking with clients. Theres information about products, pricing, quotingits all there for them.
Tech Decisions: Youve been quoted as saying the people you work with are the most exciting part of your job. As the number of people working under your direction continues to grow, is that still the case?

Koster: I still think our people are the most important part of our business, whether theyre in technology, actuarial, finance, or HR. It is the people who make a company successfulhelping them understand how each and every one of their jobs is important in the total scheme of delivery for our customers. Our employees always will remain the most important ingredient we have. It is a bit harder to stay in touch with everyone as you move up the ladder. Thats why I do town-hall-style meetings monthly with our staff members to help them understand the direction of our business and specifically understand how their technology jobs help deliver for the business and for our customers. It is important that we talk to each otherthat we stay in touch. Prudential believes strongly in what our employees think. We do surveys to make sure we understand what they need to do their job better and how they feel about what we are doing. Its still the most interesting part of my job and the part I love the most.

Tech Decisions: What do you look for in putting an IT team together?

Koster: I look for diversitydiversity of thinking, diversity of skill sets. In a technical world, you need people who love to design and strategize. You need people who can think out to the futurelook at technology and project where it might take you. You need people who work in the todayour implementation people, project managerswho know how to take the vision an architect might put out there and bring that vision home by implementing the project or delivering the features or the functions for the customer. So you need people who can strategize, people who can implement, and people who can maintain the day-to-day things once you are implementedmake sure the computer is up and running, the PCs are working, the software is available, no error rate is found, and the bills are paid. We have to find people with the different skill sets each of these jobs require and package those skill sets together with folks who like to do what they do.

Tech Decisions: You have said in the past Prudential is focused on making IT expenses part of the business process rather than spending money for ITs sake. Do you see this as a trend among insurance carriers?

Koster: Prudential specifically works on prioritizing technology to enable its business need or deliver a new product. The business is very clear about what it needs to accomplish, and the technology is brought in to enable that delivery. Technology also enables the productivity of the organization by automating features that may have been manual before. Prudential is very big on first putting its strategy together, then defining the types of products that need to be delivered for the business, and then actually bringing in the technology to enable it and make it happen. Most of my counterparts in insurance do exactly the same thing. The technology is an enabler to the business.

Tech Decisions: You have been active with standards groups such as ACORD. Have you been successful in convincing other insurers of the advantages to be reached through the use of standards? What do you say to insurance IT leaders who dont feel the need to comply with industry-specific standards?

Koster: Since Ive become a part of ACORD, weve increased the [organizations] membership, and it is clearly due to the discussions on how standards will help us to deliver the technology that will make it easier for our customers to do business with us. If were all defined differently, its hard to work with vendors because everything be-comes special or proprietary and the vendors have to try to serve many masters at once. That doesnt work. The vendors also would be faced with managing multiple versions of their products. From the standpoint of how the customer views standards, at the end of the day we may be different companies delivering different product sets, but the service we deliver is common and the customer knows the difference if the service is different. Standards actually help us in delivering to the customer in a way where we all have a chance of interacting and working together. The banks figured this out a long time ago. They figured people would have relationships with more than one bank; they would have relationships with more than one brokerage company. So, too, they will have relationships with multiple insurance carriers. Our ability to share data and interact is important from a customer perspective. The more carriers are working together to put the standards out there so we can define things the same way, it facilitates the vendors to start creating products for us to use so were not developing everything ourselves.

Tech Decisions: We started this discussion with you looking at your perspective on where e-commerce has come in the last few years. As we look ahead from 2004, is e-commerce still the area you believe will have the most technological advances in the rest of this decade?

Koster: There are not a lot of brand-new technologies out there today. In the next 10 years, we are going to see people leveraging the technologies that are already here. I still believe the Internet is going to be a big driver for us. If you think about teenagers today who are going into college, theyve used technology from when they were three and four years old, so their life is built around technology. They do their homework that way, they do their purchasing that way, they do all their communication that way. So, our ability to start to change the way we do business to the way this generation will want to work is going to be important. In the next five years, they are going to be looking for all this technology, and we better be there, otherwise theyll go to the companies that have it.

I still believe the Internet is very much the game. We confused the issue by saying we were going to sell things over the Internet. Not all products can be sold over the Internet, but it certainly is a tool of choice in terms of making it easy and quick to get service. Leveraging the Internet from a productivity point of view, being sensitive to customers time schedules, and recognizing the fact they have little time, I think thats going to be the win in the end.