A year later, Chubb lured Golden back to help the carrier roll out its next-generation technology in the field, his first IT-related role. From there, Golden became a consultant, working with Chubb's independent agents to solicit feedback on pending IT projects.

Seeking to move into a strategic role, Golden joined Insurance House in 2002 as director of project management. His first task was to develop a repeatable methodology for IT projects. "When I got here, everybody was doing something differently and expecting the same results, so there was no consistency," he explains.

Golden's work at managing projects, improving efficiency, and streamlining processes caught the attention of top executives. In November 2003, he took over responsibility for all of IT, at which time he faced a new set of challenges. He was promoted to CIO and vice president of strategic business services in 2007.

"When I took over IT, our biggest challenge was the 2003 top players [in the industry] were changing the game in terms of how to deliver products to buyers," he says. "None of our infrastructure was agile enough to make quick changes in pricing or delivery mechanisms to be able to compete with that."

To fix the situation, Golden and his team began working on a series of projects–labeled the Agile Architecture Initiative–to revamp the company's IT infrastructure.

"This initiative is about creating efficiency in our operations," Golden says. "I'm trying to eliminate any [unnecessary] expense and time in our transactions and enable the business at the same time."

For several years, Golden and his team have implemented numerous applications under the initiative's umbrella. In March, the company implemented a point-of-sale portal that provides agents with a single point of entry and a simplified rating process.

"These initiatives are fundamentally changing how we take our products to market and lowering the cost of how we maintain solutions," Golden asserts. "There's great excitement about being able to work on projects that will help us be successful at executing our strategic plan."

Golden attributes forming the right IT team as key to his department's success. When he became CIO, IT had 40 people. Today, it has 26.

"We've been successful in changing the culture to a service mentality and becoming a much more efficiently operating team," he explains. "It's been a remarkable change in the perception of the technology staff talent in the organization."

Although he did not plan for a career in insurance IT, Golden is happy with how things turned out. "Being in a position to sit at the table as strategy is conceived and have a real, hard-core impact about how it gets executed is very rewarding," he says.

Sharon Baker is a freelance business writer based in Charlotte, N.C.