LEADERSHIP

NYL's Cook on 'Why Data Is the North Star at New York Life.'

New York Life | July 11, 2022

Insurance Innovation Reporter’s “Life Accelerated” podcast recently interviewed Alex Cook, Senior Vice President and Head of Strategic Capabilities, about New York Life’s innovation efforts in support of the life insurance sales, purchase, and ongoing policy owner and beneficiary experiences. The resulting 35-minute episode is titled “Why Data Is the North Star at New York Life.”

Throughout the conversation, Alex speaks to the work underway across New York Life to drive change and modernize in support of the company’s overall mission to provide peace of mind and financial security for families. This includes enhancing New York Life’s core value proposition – the human centered guidance and advice that the company’s agents and advisors deliver – to enable clients and their families to protect what matters most and also prosper over the long-term.

Topics addressed include:

• Innovation: How New York Life Ventures drives New York Life’s pace of innovation
• Decision making: New York Life’s Center for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (CDSAi) empowers smarter, faster, and more model-driven decisions enterprise-wide based on data and advanced analytics including statistical models and AI
• Fact finding: GuideMe is a digital platform that enables agents to engage in robust fact-finding and needs assessments with their clients to fully understand and capture needs and then meet them within a protection-first framework
• Underwriting: Advancements in electronic applications and fast-track and model-driven underwriting greatly improve the application process for consumers
• Collaboration: Businesses across New York Life work together with the Technology team to drive change through a much more   agile approach
• Infrastructure: New York Life is able to make well-informed, data-driven decisions thanks to the company’s strong data infrastructure and increased ability to analyze data effectively
• Careers: In the ongoing search for exceptional talent, the fact that New York Life provides a social good by delivering financial security and peace of mind makes for unique and compelling career opportunities
• Core initiatives: The three indispensable initiatives for driving transformation at New York Life are modernizing the operational core of the company, transitioning to the cloud, and ensuring that the company has the right cybersecurity capabilities in place

To close the conversation, podcast host and Insurance Innovation Reporter Executive Editor Anthony O’Donnell explains:

“It would be hard to find a more authoritative speaker on strategy than Alex Cook, given his career experience and the range of his responsibilities. I found myself reflecting on his reference to the innovator's dilemma, where the habits of success can leave a company defenseless to technology disruptors. That's not the case at New York Life, which strikes a carefully calibrated balance between the tried and true and the innovative. Alex provides many examples, but we might look to New York Life's exploration of a range of technologies, including artificial intelligence, that make buying life insurance easier and faster all while affirming the agent and advisor roles, along with the company's core values.”

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