MBIA’s Randolph Aims For Top-Line Impact

After MBIA Insurance Corp. (Armonk, N.Y., $36.2 billion in assets) lost several of its top-tier technology executives to dot-com fever, Andrea Randolph was brought in as part of a group of new-bloods led by CTO Bob Wheeler. She and her colleagues concentrated heavily on bottom-line concerns as they reoriented an IT shop in disarray. But when she assumes responsibilities as top technology officer on Jan. 1, 2004-upon Wheeler's retirement-Randolph aims to focus on driving profitability.

Randolph began at MBIA as vice president of infrastructure and operations in February 2000, leaving a position at MetLife as director, enterprise architecture group. A year later, she was given application management responsibilities for the company's asset management division, and added similar duties for MBIA's management services division in 2002. She will take on the remaining insurance operations division when she becomes CTO.

One of Randolph's biggest accomplishments was to re-engineer the carrier's wide-area network into a new hub-spoke configuration. MBIA's 600 or so employees are spread about the U.S., Europe and Asia, and count on being able to communicate effectively and access relevant information in a timely fashion. "We operate in kind of a virtual mode," Randolph explains.

As Randolph looks toward submitting her strategic plan, she says IT has to look beyond expense management: "We have to look to what we can do to allow the company to to support new business in generating revenue."

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