May 16, 2024 · 56 min · 13 segments
Kathy Kay, CIO at Principal Financial, joins host Maryfran Johnson for this CIO Leadership Live interview. They discuss balancing traditional AI vs. genAI, serving customers holistically (not just…
Kathy KayGuestMary Fran JohnsonHostWell, and I want to come back to the IT organization and kind of how you've organized it and reorganized it over the last few years.
But first, I want to ask you about when I often ask about digital business models, is there have they changed or what have you had to adapt to during your time as CIO? It's probably part of what we've already mentioned about getting in there and integrating the experience more for customers, but often there's an employee side of that as well.
Well, here we are talking about all the trials and tribulations of technology.
How have your digital business models evolved over the time you've been there at PFG? I know we mentioned the integrating the customer experience on the front end through the website, but you've probably had versions of it inside the company as well, even more significantly.
yeah so and so when i started i will say we were already on this path right of um making sure that we had a digital plan digital was the hype there for a bit um and and so there was you know there was a point And the pandemic, as I mentioned, sped that up.
But what I will say is there was this point in time where we thought during the pandemic that everything's going to go digital.
But what we learn, and you can see this across the financial sector, is When a customer is making what they view as a big decision from a financial perspective, they will go through the digital channel up until a point, and then they want to talk to a human.
And so this idea of making it easy for them to go through these channels, right? I'm going to go in digitally.
I want to talk to somebody, getting there seamlessly, and then maybe even getting them back to the digital channel if that's where they want to be comfortable.
That is something, again, we are not done with that across the company because you really have to stitch you know, the experiences together very well.
But that is something that we are evolving and continue to evolve because it's what the customers expect.
Well, and I want to come back to the IT organization and kind of how you've organized it and reorganized it over the last few years.
But first, I want to ask you about when I often ask about digital business models, is there have they changed or what have you had to adapt to during your time as CIO? It's probably part of what we've already mentioned about getting in there and integrating the experience more for customers, but often there's an employee side of that as well.
Well, here we are talking about all the trials and tribulations of technology.
How have your digital business models evolved over the time you've been there at PFG? I know we mentioned the integrating the customer experience on the front end through the website, but you've probably had versions of it inside the company as well, even more significantly.
yeah so and so when i started i will say we were already on this path right of um making sure that we had a digital plan digital was the hype there for a bit um and and so there was you know there was a point And the pandemic, as I mentioned, sped that up.
But what I will say is there was this point in time where we thought during the pandemic that everything's going to go digital.
But what we learn, and you can see this across the financial sector, is When a customer is making what they view as a big decision from a financial perspective, they will go through the digital channel up until a point, and then they want to talk to a human.
And so this idea of making it easy for them to go through these channels, right? I'm going to go in digitally.
I want to talk to somebody, getting there seamlessly, and then maybe even getting them back to the digital channel if that's where they want to be comfortable.
That is something, again, we are not done with that across the company because you really have to stitch you know, the experiences together very well.
But that is something that we are evolving and continue to evolve because it's what the customers expect.
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