After 17 years with GE, Jim Fowler joined the insurance industry as the Chief Technology Officer of one of the largest insurers in the US. Just two years later, he was faced with guiding the company through months of Covid lockdowns and a swift transition to working from home practices.
He was also named the 2022 Ohio CIO of the Year ORBIE Awards Leadership Recipient. He says, “I love technology and its application in helping companies drive growth, deliver productivity and inspire innovation.”
Insurtech Insights caught up with him for an exclusive interview, ahead of his appearance at ITI USA 2023.
You joined Nationwide following a very successful career with GE. What has that transition been like for you, given you started in a new industry, just prior to some very turbulent times?
I spent many years at GE and I never expected that I would leave. But, when I met with Nationwide, they made the decision easy for me because of how the leadership talked about disruption. All of the executives I met with made an invitation to me to help them disrupt themselves and our industry before it disrupts Nationwide.
That sentiment was echoed by members of the Board of Directors. I saw a management team as engaged and invested in the idea that technology is going to change the way we work, the products we sell and the expectations of the customers we serve.
Since joining Nationwide, what I’ve found is that it is a very forward-looking organisation, and it’s been that way for its entire history, reinventing itself many times along the way. In fact, one of Nationwide’s company founders, Murray Lincoln, wrote a book called Vice President in Charge of Revolution.
You are clearly, very passionate about technology. Were you always interested in innovation – and, what is it about the space that attracts you?
During my freshman year in high school, my dad’s pharmacy implemented its first pharmacy management system. It completely transformed the business, enabling it to go from being paper-run to digital. I helped my dad get the computer system up and running and performed a lot of the maintenance tasks like doing backups, startup, shutdown, etc. I was essentially doing system administration before I even knew what those words meant.
It was amazing to me to see tasks that we used to spend days on getting done in minutes, and I was completely intrigued by how it all worked and fit together. I don’t think they could have continued to run the store without that change. Ever since then it’s been an interest of mine to see how technology can affect other industries.
As the Chief Technology Officer for Nationwide, leading the company’s digital transformation journey, what are the biggest challenges you’ve encountered to progress?
One of the biggest challenges for anyone leading a digital transformation is to recognise that modernisation is not for the weak or the faint of heart. It’s very difficult. And when it’s implemented across an organisation and impacts how work is accomplished, that’s especially hard.
The other challenge to progress is remembering to keep the customer at the center of the discussion. When you’re implementing wholesale change, it’s very easy to lose sight of the needs of the customer, especially when you’re focused on the details of ensuring the change takes place.
What strategies proved most successful in handling those challenges?
It takes grit, fortitude, determination and leadership from the top to transform core systems to ensure they will be able to provide the data that is necessary for the future. You have to prepare yourself and your team for that.
I’ve found that you can’t over-communicate enough the reasons behind what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. If you want to bring people along and get buy-in, you have to say it multiple times in multiple ways so that people get it and they feel comfortable weighing in.
To make sure that you’re keeping your end customers in mind, whether they are inside or outside your organization, it’s important to create steering committees with people who can give you feedback. At Nationwide, we include senior leadership on those committees. If it’s a transformational project, we make sure that the executive office leads it, which ensures that all the teams see that the buy-in is coming from the top of the organization.
In terms of leadership, what’s your core philosophy when dealing with change? Can you give me an example of that, and why it was successful?
For me, transparency is absolutely critical. It starts with a clear problem statement. Then you need a clear set of measurements to know what you’re doing to fix the problem. And before you digitise anything, you need to lean out, or really analyse and improve, the process.
And so, for me, my philosophy around change is that you have to be transparent along all of those steps, but the steps in the process are really critical. You can’t jump to solutioning before you’ve done the work to understand the problem, measure it and lean out the process or the issue before you apply technology to it.
AI and Chat GPT are big news right now. What is Nationwide doing in terms of AI innovation, and, what’s your take on AI development in general, especially in light of Elon Musk’s recent warnings about the technology?
AI has been part of the way we work at Nationwide for over 10 years. We’ve intelligently automated our processes using predictive modeling and artificial intelligence in underwriting, clerical processes, and HR processes. The next big change on horizon is introduction of new computing capability that will increase capacity for prediction 10X and make large language models more viable.
We’ve already started populating our own large language model within our innovation team, and we are doing early tests for how large language models can be used to provide better customer service or personalized products and better operational capabilities across the company.
Is there a personal achievement from the past 12 months of which you are particularly proud?
At Nationwide, we work as one team and focus more on team performance than we do individual performance. So, what I’m most proud of is that in the last 18 months, eight of our 10 business units have gone live with new transactional systems that consolidate everything into a single system. It’s a big improvement for those businesses, but it’s the team effort that has allowed that to take place that I’m most proud of.
What inspires you in insurtech today?
I’m really excited about the fact that the industry has gone from one that was focused on helping a customer after a loss, to one that’s helping reduce the risk and the possibility that a loss occurs in the first place.
For example, our telematics products are coaching drivers to stay safe on the roads. We have developed smart home technology that can catch a water leak before it causes major damage. Nationwide is embracing the idea of assurance before insurance, and that is a real positive for our customers.
What’s next for Jim Fowler?
The role of CIO or CTO within insurance is changing. It’s transitioning away from the back office, keep the lights running function to one that is an R&D and engineering leader. We are the manufacturing arm of the industry and I think more and more our business partners are expecting us to be in the room explaining how technology is going to advance products and services.
So, I think for all of us, not just for Jim Fowler, the future of the CTO and CIO roles are to be the R&D leaders for our companies. That’s the role that I’m trying to play more of inside Nationwide.
Join Nationwide in New York at ITI USA
Jim Fowler is giving a keynote speech on: The Bionic Insurance Company: “We can rebuild them” at Insurtech Insights USA 2023 on June 8th, at the Javits Center in New York.
To find out more, click here
