Connie O’Brien Helps AXA Equitable "Walk the Talk" in Internet Strategy

The career of Connie O'Brien has evolved from traditional marketing and advertising to a marriage of those disciplines with technology in order to shape user experiences for companies such as Kodak, Kraft and The Hartford. A year ago she joined AXA Equitable Life Insurance Co. (a subsidiary of AXA Financial, a member of Paris-based AXA Group, US$138.7 billion in consolidated 2007 revenue) to drive those goals internally and recently was promoted to senior vice president of internet strategy and development. O'Brien sees a mandate for her work in AXA Group's "Ambition 2012," aiming to become the "preferred company" for customers, distributors and employees. Since her arrival, she has driven the launch of Performance -- an online analytic and research tool to help financial professionals make variable life and annuity investment portfolio choices. She also oversaw a redesign of the company's Web site.

"The overarching objective is to become the preferred company," O'Brien notes. "Within that, my focus is on customer centricity -- not only making sure data is current, relevant, accurate and available, but also that I'm educating any prospect who might be looking for information about financial services."

Among O'Brien's current initiatives is making Performance available to end customers, as well as the launch of a common portfolio summary that will enable customers to see all of their AXA investments summarized through one online point. This is characteristic of AXA's direction to take a more corporate-wide approach to Internet communications, which have tended to be siloed in the past, says O'Brien.

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