A boat lover, Mark Sanders is a big fan of technology that supports navigation. This includes sonar, radar, and sound propagation devices–or, as he explains, any tool that helps determine “where you are, when you are.”
Such navigational prowess is bound to help Sanders in his role as chief technology officer and senior vice president at New York Life Insurance, the largest mutual life insurance company in the United States. He joined the company in April 2006.
Within his first year, Sanders intends to accomplish several goals: realign the skills and experience of his IT staff more closely with the business; develop and begin implementing a multiyear IT strategic plan; and add features to several ongoing IT initiatives to improve efficiencies and gain competitive advantage.
As part of the IT realignment, Sanders created an organization devoted to architecture and engineering that is closely aligned to the operational group, which handles service delivery. “I'm very fortunate to have inherited a high-tenured IT staff,” he says. “Realigning employees into more functional areas will help us match the skills and experience of all our talented people with the right roles and responsibilities.”
New York Life has more than 1,300 IT professionals who work in the company's New York-based headquarters and four other U.S. locations as well as in several international countries. As CTO, Sanders has overall responsibility for the company's global IT strategic direction. As a whole, the Fortune 100 company employs more than 8,200 domestic staff and 4,900 international employees.
At the heart of Sanders' IT strategic plan is integrating the company's legacy systems with distributed solutions to create one heterogeneous environment of interoperable platforms, applications, and servers. Approximately 70 percent of New York Life's applications currently run on mainframes. A majority of its Web-based services operate in both a UNIX and Windows environment with a variety of business applications.
“We've already progressed far in the world of content management and portal technology, but we want to extend that further to support seamless integration of our in-house data,” Sanders explains.
To that end, New York Life rolled out its agency portal, based on IBM's WebSphere, in third-quarter 2006. New York Life also is developing a virtual e-room project, called Collaboration, to allow many-to-one or one-to-many simultaneous conversations. Based on EMC's eRoom technology, the project is expected to roll out in first-quarter 2007.
“This project basically offers an elaborate whiteboarding capability because it allows users to make presentations and perform interactive activities within an e-room,” Sanders says. “Allowing agents and employees to collaborate online regardless of location or time will be an amazing enhancement to our business.”
Another area of opportunity Sanders expects to explore is how to move life insurance and investment management products into the virtual space. Offering such products online is a challenging prospect for the industry, which faces stringent state and federal legal requirements.
“This is a challenge from a business, legal, and technology perspective,” Sanders asserts. “If we do move into that space, how are we going to integrate our technology with it? How will it impact how we conduct business? Will we be able to convince our virtual visitors to procure our real products? I see this as a true area of opportunity for financial services companies.”
Sanders speaks from experience in online retailing. He previously served as chairman and chief executive officer of BevAccess, a combination online procurement site for licensed retail buyers and trade media group for the alcohol beverage industry. He also has worked as a senior director at Merrill Lynch and held leadership positions at Salomon Brothers Inc., J.P. Morgan, Sun Microsystems, and Grumman Aerospace. Before joining New York Life, Sanders was chief technology officer for BFK Asset Management.
For someone who's responsible for finding the business value in technology, Sanders says he often turns to consumer-oriented devices such as his boating navigational tools, GPS system, and iPod for perspective. At New York Life, he looks forward to leveraging his experiences along with the IT organization's vast business acumen to help the business maintain its competitive advantage.
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