Knight oversees an IT department of approximately 1,400 people. About 1,000 are located in the United States, primarily in Warren and Whitehouse Station, N.J., with the rest scattered in branches and affiliates in Connecticut, Canada, Latin America, Asia Pacific, and Europe.

Although Chubb operates under a federated IT model, Knight is helping his department become more “boundaryless” by creating core centers to handle certain issues uniformly throughout the company, such as how to integrate components and apply business rules engines.

“Although a federated model drives responsiveness well for business units, it does not provide economies of scale and cost-effectiveness as well as a centralized model would, and that's what we're trying to change–to get the best of both worlds,” Knight says.

On the agile front, Knight has formed a team to evaluate Chubb's governance process and examine how the company provides software.

“We're highly aligned, and that alignment allows us to deliver quite nicely. But business units want us to do more and do it quicker,” he contends. “We're going to come at this from every angle of how we do business. How do we get more agile in every aspect of IT, from processes to development methods to decision-making to staffing?”

To become more agile, Chubb is modernizing its policy administration systems, implementing predictive modeling, and installing business intelligence and data analytics tools. Knight also is investigating service-oriented architecture and automated testing tools and plans to transform processes through business rules engines and business process management.

To address his third goal, Knight says he wants IT to be more strategic in its understanding of the business and help drive strategies through technology solutions. Knight formed an Enterprise Initiatives Leadership Council, in which he and three divisional CIOs are focusing on governance, innovation, integration, and strategy issues.

“This group is developing an IT strategy that will help us really understand the business from a more comprehensive point of view and allow us to see the big picture and align what we do with the company,” he says.

In establishing relationships, Knight seeks to create a culture of collaboration with the company's vendors and business partners.

Once his BASIC vision is ingrained in corporate culture, Knight expects Chubb's systems will be more streamlined and nimble and coupled tighter with agency systems.

Knight earned a bachelor's degree in computer science from Utica College and a master's in information systems from Kennedy-Western University in California. His first foray in insurance IT began at Utica National Insurance Co. From there, he spent nine years at Home Insurance Co., moving up the ranks from programming to management. After a year at Medco, Knight joined Chubb Insurance in 1995. He was appointed executive vice president and global CIO this spring.

“I always knew I wanted to be in a leadership role, so to be where I am now is something I aspired to,” he says.

Knight says his biggest challenge is keeping up with demand. “Technology touches everything, and it has a pervasive, positive impact in an insurance company. No matter where you look, every new initiative we start on the business side has a serious IT component,” he says. “IT is now becoming a major differentiator, and its importance is only going to increase as time goes on.”