AAL/LB Merger Challenges IT

Cultural differences can present the greatest challenges to a successful merger, and this is proving true with the joining of Appleton, WI-based Aid Association for Lutherans (AAL) and Lutheran Brotherhood (LB, Minneapolis) The company is currently being called Aid Association for Lutherans/Lutheran Brotherhood (AAL/LB, $55.5 billion in assets).

Though there is no schism in the fundamental values of the two organizations, differences in technology resulted in a major job for the new entity's merged IT group.

Once the decision to merge had been made, the IT groups of the companies met to undertake a "current-state" systems assessment, says Steve Lapacz, second vice president, corporate IT, (formerly of AAL). "We found that if there were two state-of-the art products out there, they took one path, and we took the other," he recalls. The differences extended to "everything from e-mail systems to telephone switches to product administration systems. They were more NT-driven, we were much more IBM/Unix," he says.

The IT assessment was combined with assistance from New York-based consultant Cap Gemini Ernst & Young (New York). Among the resolutions the analysis helped precipitate was to move to a more browser-based world, reports Lapacz.

The IT groups met in September to identify work that could be undertaken prior to the merger date of January 1, 2002. For example, having considered AAL's Lotus Notes and LB's Microsoft Express e-mail systems, "we went through the pros and cons of both, and charged a team to begin moving us to a single system," Lapacz recounts.

Anthony O'Donnell has covered technology in the insurance industry since 2000, when he joined the editorial staff of Insurance & Technology. As an editor and reporter for I&T and the InformationWeek Financial Services of TechWeb he has written on all areas of information ... View Full Bio