Jun 5, 2024 · 1 hr · 12 segments
Jeff Sippel, Executive Vice President and CIO at Northwestern Mutual, joins host Maryfran Johnson for this CIO Leadership Live interview. They discuss productivity gains with AI, evolving financial…
Jeff SippelGuestMary Fran JohnsonHostTo me, having talked with so many CIOs over the years, it sounds like that kind of family jewels that you find in ERP systems or the systems of record, because this is involving a lot of your systems of record as well, right? This is probably a very complicated setup with a tool like this.
Well, one of the neat things that we've been able to do by having our own tools, we can connect it to all our systems like you've highlighted.
So we have, whether it's a policy admin system or a system of record on our wealth side, we can make sure those are seamless connections to really bring that data automatically into that financial planning process and make it as seamless as as possible.
And there's a large portion of our engineering teams dedicated to making sure that we're constantly improving that product while also making sure it operates as seamlessly as possible.
Do you now, as the CIO now, you're probably not as deeply involved in working on that tool, but you probably still keep track of it.
yeah at this point what we make sure uh as my role i mean besides being a cheerleader from the sidelines and i would say uh at this point my hobby is financial planning i love it for myself i the product managers of that product uh if they're watching they will know that uh i care about them deeply and i'm talking to them all the time but um what we do is we make sure from a cio standpoint You know, that tool, because it's so essential, we need to make sure it's highly available, highly reliable.
If we're going to do good financial planning, we need you as a client to trust us with some of the most important information you have.
And then we need to make sure it fits in with the ecosystem of the larger environment.
So does it meet the standards of our technology? Is it aligned to what we call our target state architecture? All those pieces, just like we do with every other application or set of tools, many of which we build ourselves, we have to make sure it's aligned so that really all these building blocks work together.
Otherwise, we can't fulfill that promise of it being seamless, it having all the right data at the right time to make the very best decisions.
This is something that got worked on for five years, and now there needs to be constantly new versions of it.
I mean, I think this is the one thing that I take away from building products on the digital side and at startups is, you know, a technology company, there is no done.
And our CEO, John Schlipsky, he loves to talk about how our financial planning tool and many of our tools are like the iPhone.
To me, having talked with so many CIOs over the years, it sounds like that kind of family jewels that you find in ERP systems or the systems of record, because this is involving a lot of your systems of record as well, right? This is probably a very complicated setup with a tool like this.
Well, one of the neat things that we've been able to do by having our own tools, we can connect it to all our systems like you've highlighted.
So we have, whether it's a policy admin system or a system of record on our wealth side, we can make sure those are seamless connections to really bring that data automatically into that financial planning process and make it as seamless as as possible.
And there's a large portion of our engineering teams dedicated to making sure that we're constantly improving that product while also making sure it operates as seamlessly as possible.
Do you now, as the CIO now, you're probably not as deeply involved in working on that tool, but you probably still keep track of it.
yeah at this point what we make sure uh as my role i mean besides being a cheerleader from the sidelines and i would say uh at this point my hobby is financial planning i love it for myself i the product managers of that product uh if they're watching they will know that uh i care about them deeply and i'm talking to them all the time but um what we do is we make sure from a cio standpoint You know, that tool, because it's so essential, we need to make sure it's highly available, highly reliable.
If we're going to do good financial planning, we need you as a client to trust us with some of the most important information you have.
And then we need to make sure it fits in with the ecosystem of the larger environment.
So does it meet the standards of our technology? Is it aligned to what we call our target state architecture? All those pieces, just like we do with every other application or set of tools, many of which we build ourselves, we have to make sure it's aligned so that really all these building blocks work together.
Otherwise, we can't fulfill that promise of it being seamless, it having all the right data at the right time to make the very best decisions.
This is something that got worked on for five years, and now there needs to be constantly new versions of it.
I mean, I think this is the one thing that I take away from building products on the digital side and at startups is, you know, a technology company, there is no done.
And our CEO, John Schlipsky, he loves to talk about how our financial planning tool and many of our tools are like the iPhone.
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