Allstate Chief Information Officer Zulfi Jeevanjee says his initial interest in technology is fortuitously due to a hijacking incident in Africa.
Born and raised in Kenya, Jeevanjee never used a computer as a child, but developed early aptitude in subjects like chemistry, physics, and mathematics. He had hoped to enroll in a British university, the path his parents took before him. But the armed truck carrying his exams was hijacked and never made it to Europe. The universities said he’d have to wait several months to apply.
Jeevanjee shifted his focus to America, where he earned a scholarship from Washington University in St. Louis. After taking an introductory computer science course, he switched his major to computer engineering. “I just love the fact that I could listen to someone’s problem and then just convert that into a solution,” says Jeevanjee.
Throughout his career of more than three decades, Jeevanjee held leadership roles at Wells Fargo as it digitized consumer banking and integrated the acquisitions of Wachovia and A.G. Edwards. Jeevanjee is a boomerang employee at Allstate, initially joining in 2018 to lead the architecture, innovation, and systems engineering teams, before leaping to CVS Health as chief technology officer during the pandemic, and then rejoining Allstate in 2022 as CIO.
“Allstate, like most insurers, was saying ‘Look, we got to change the way we distribute our products,” says Jeevanjee.
The industry was moving away from selling home, auto, and other insurance policies over the phone via agents—a bulk of Allstate’s business—to more directly selling insurance online. Transforming how insurance was sold also required a restructuring of the technology team, which relied on project managers and business analysts to prioritize the delivery of tech solutions on time and within budget.
Those project manager roles were eliminated and workers were retrained to focus almost exclusively on engineering. Today, roughly 7,000 team members are organized in small teams of 8 to 12 people, focused on developing outcome-based solutions. One team, as an example, exclusively develops payments solutions, ensuring new features like Apple Pay or Google Pay can be deployed across the business.
As consumers spend more time online on the hunt for a new home insurance policy, they are confronted with questions about the age of their roof and other key details they need to input before getting a quote for a plan. Generative artificial intelligence advancements, Jeevanjee says, can help make the process easier and smoother for consumers (and ideally, Allstate hopes, increase business opportunities).
Internally, Allstate attempted to develop a tool to train AI models to automate this process, but determined it had insufficient imaging data. Instead, Allstate is working with a third-party AI startup that takes satellite images of home roofs, which Allstate can use to determine a home policy rate without getting that information from a policyholder. This feature is being used in several states including Illinois and Tennessee.
Other applications of generative AI include a copilot tool custom built by Allstate that initially was tested by 50 employees, but is now used by all 14,000 who investigate insurance claims. Generative AI helps ensure that the 50,000 messages sent to customers each day remove unnecessary insurance jargon and feature more empathetic language. Jeevanjee says the new tool has helped improve a metric Allstate tracks to assess a customer’s experience.
Another generative AI pilot currently underway is a so-called “customer engagement sidekick,” which listens into a conversation with a customer and guides sales agents. If the customer mentions their basement has flooded a few times, and the agent forgets to follow up on that detail, the generative AI tool will share a reminder to ask the customer about flood protection. Jeevanjee says 30 employees use this tool today and the plan is to roll it out to all 20,000 licensed sales representatives and call center employees.
Increasingly, while AI is doing a lot of work for employees, the decisions are still being made by humans. But that too may change.
“We’re being a little bit cautious right now,” says Jeevanjee. “At some point, we’ll get comfortable letting AI actually have the conversation and have the human in the background.”
John Kell
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NEWS PACKETS
Boeing names a Defense Department IT veteran as CIDO. Aerospace company Boeing has appointed Dana Deasy, who previously served as CIO for the U.S. Department of Defense, as its chief information digital officer and SVP of IT and data analytics, replacing former CIO Susan Doniz, who left the company at the end of 2024. Doniz was the fifth member of Boeing’s executive council to leave the company, ranked 52nd on the Fortune 500, since CEO Kelly Ortberg took the reins in August and has worked to turn around the airplane manufacturer after years of woes. Deasy has also held leadership roles at JPMorgan Chase, BP, and General Motors.
Nvidia CEO gives keynote speech at CES. Earlier this week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang kicked off the event with a keynote speech in Las Vegas with the debut of Cosmos, an AI platform that’s powered by generative AI models trained on 20 million hours of real-world robotics and driving videos. As Fortune reports, Nvidia is well aware it cannot ride the AI wave forever—demand for the company’s specialized chips has boomed—and Cosmos may present a fresh opportunity, with Uber and robot startups like Figure and Agility among the technology’s early adopters. Nvidia also unveiled the company’s next generation of gaming chips for PCs, a portion of the business that’s growing but still accounts for less than 10% of total revenue, CNBC reports.
U.S. sanctions China-based cybersecurity company for alleged role in hacking. The Treasury Department sanctioned Beijing-based Integrity Technology Group for the company’s alleged role in multiple hacking events targeting U.S. infrastructure, while the Chinese cyber security agency responded by alleging attacks have occurred on the nation’s own networks. The AP reports that the sanctions are not related to recent reports that China state-sponsored actors infiltrated Treasury workstations via third-party software provider BeyondTrust (according to the company, hackers gained access to a key used to secure a cloud-based service that Treasury uses for technical support).
ADOPTION CURVE
Employers aren’t embracing enough AI automation, survey warns. New data unveiled this week at CES from Accenture, based on two parallel surveys of more than 4,000 executives in 28 countries, found that 47% of leaders say they expect their organizations will make generative AI tools either “significantly” or “fully” accessible to their employees to automate tasks and workflows over the next three years. While a plurality (49%) say they will partially make them accessible, Accenture warns in the report that this approach “may leave a lot of value unmet.”
“Right now, there’s a gap between the autonomous capabilities of AI and the people who know how to maximize AI’s use,” Accenture warns in the report, adding that a 2024 report showed that nearly two-thirds of employers felt job candidates should have foundational knowledge of generative AI tools, but that half of recent college graduates said their programs did not adequately prepare them to use the technology.
JOBS RADAR
Hiring:
- Shutterstock is seeking a CTO, based in New York City. Posted salary range: $400K-$450K/year.
- Comrise is seeking a CTO with a focus on AI perception algorithm research, based in San Jose, California. Posted salary range: $200K-$500K/year.
- Carta is seeking a senior director of security (chief information security officer), based in New York City. Posted salary range: $273.8K-$365K/year.
Hired:
- Johnson Controls has appointed Vijay Sankaran as chief digital and information officer, elevating to the role as of January 1 after previously serving as CTO. Sankaran’s promotion will unite IT and digital organizations under one leadership at Johnson Controls, which makes things like HVAC equipment and fire detection sensors. Prior to joining Johnson Controls in 2021, Sankaran was CIO at TD Ameritrade and IT CTO at Ford Motor.
- TD Synnex has appointed Kristie Grinnell as EVP and CIO, effective January 20, succeeding Bonnie Smith, who will be retiring from the role but will remain at the company through February 1 to support the transition. Grinnell joins TD Synnex from DXC Technology, where she served as CIO and led an IT organization of over 1,500 employees. Prior to DXC, Grinnell was global CIO and chief supply chain officer at General Dynamics Information Technology.
- DXC Technology announced the appointment of Brad Novak as CIO, where he will report to DXC’s Chief Administrative Officer James Walker. Novak joins to embed AI across the infrastructure of the IT services company and will help standardize and consolidate platforms and tools to improve operational efficiency. Novak previously worked at Barclays, where he served as CTO of the firm’s corporate and investment bank, and as a managing director at Credit Suisse.
- WM Technology named Sarah Griffis as CTO, effective on Monday, joining the operator of an online cannabis marketplace after previously spending three years as CTO at digital healthcare company Cerebral. Griffis also previously held engineering leadership roles at GoodRx and Kindbody.
- Alight has promoted EVP of technology Deepika Duggirala to CTO, effective January 1, where she will oversee the employee-benefits vendor’s technology organization and accelerate innovations, particularly in AI and automation. Prior to joining Alight in 2023, Duggirala served as SVP of global technology platforms at TransUnion and also held leadership roles at SAP and Motorola.
- Stage Front Tickets appointed Rob McFeaters as CIO and SVP of technology and product, a newly created role at the event ticket reseller. McFeaters joined Stage Front following a 10-year tenure at Element Fleet Management, where he held various leadership roles, including most recently as VP of IT. McFeaters also previously served as a CTO and CIO at mortgage services provider PHH Mortgage.
- Symbotic named James Kuffner as CTO, following the retirement of his predecessor George Dramalis. Kuffner holds 40 patents in 3D graphics, robotics, and autonomous vehicles and joins the warehouse automation company from Toyota Motor, where he held several leadership roles, including CTO of Toyota Research Institute.
