John Patterson considers his company a 125-year-old startup.
By that, Patterson means Baltimore Life, a mutual life insurance company founded in 1882, made a strategic decision in 2002 to realign and restructure dramatically its strategy, markets, products, and distribution. Critical to the company's rebirth was a focus on reducing costs and enhancing service–areas that greatly affect Patterson in his roles as Baltimore Life's senior vice president of operations and CIO.
"In a small company such as ours, we need to be market focused, disciplined, and high performance in order to survive," Patterson asserts. "We developed a consolidated plan driven by three simple objectives. Number one is to focus on the agent, because agents are the key to our success. Number two, we want to be easy to do business with. Number three is to keep reducing our costs."
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