CIO Interview: Jacob Abboud, CIO, Allianz

Abboud speaks to Computing about his top priorities in 2018

In this interview we hear about the key items on the agenda of Jacob Abboud, CIO, Allianz.

"Digital transformation remains a focus, getting us to become digital by default," begins Abboud. "That means having optimised customer journeys. It means streamlining the digital intreraction to ensure as effective as possible support both for the customer and our partnership with brokers. It also means getting better insight from data, and building the infrastructure of the future. It means operational efficiency through robotics and automation, and looking at building digital workplace technology to enable our people.

It's also about looking at a different ways of working together, rather than the old-fashioned siloed ways of working; bringing people together in cross-functional teams, so that they're empowered, and using new technology to deliver those outcomes.

"We're also very excited by the joint venture with LV=, which we announced at the back end of last year, so we're working with our colleagues in LV= to leverage their brand with our strength in the personal insurance space.

"Another item on my agenda is IT and business transformation. That means getting rid of legacy, focusing investment on the future not the past, looking at productivity and focusing on cost optimisation within in IT.

"We're also looking at cyber security, as we need to bolster our defences. We need to ensure we can detect any breaches and be able to respond to them, and there has been quite a lot of investment there, from capabilities like data loss prevention, heuristic analytics, looking at next-gen firewalls, and advanced threat analytics capabilities.

"Innovation and emerging technologies, that's another really important item on my agenda. I see myself as the champion to bring in new, emerging technologies, to test and learn whether they're the right things for our organisation, and if they are, then bring them into the mainstream and scale them up."

Watch the full interview for more.