Ray Oral Named CIO of CNA Financial Corporation

Ray Oral will take on the role of senior vice president and CIO at CNA Financial Corp. (Chicago), a source at the carrier confirms. Oral, whose most recent title is senior vice president, IT solutions delivery, will succeed John Golden, executive vice president and CIO. Oral has also been named to CNA's Operating Committee, an internal working group that has primary responsibility for putting the company's strategies into practice across the enterprise.

Oral will be responsible for CNA's information technology and will head the company's efforts to integrate technology and business processing into an efficient, flexible and scalable processing platform, according to a CNA source. He will responsible for outsourcing, delivering application and infrastructure solutions, and ensuring that technology investments drive CNA's profitability, the source says.

Golden will be leaving the carrier as of Sept. 11, according to a source. At press time he could not be reached for comment about the reasons for his departure or his plans for the future. Golden arrived at CNA in 2001 as executive vice president and CIO and worked closely with former CEO Steve Lilienthal, who retired effective June, 6 2009. Lilienthal was succeeded by Tom Motamed, former vice chairman and chief operating officer of Chubb Corp. (Warren, N.J.).

Golden received Insurance & Technology's Elite 8 Award last year. Earlier this year, Golden attempted to climb Mt. Everest. Owing to an injury, which proved to be slighter than estimated, he was unable to make the final push to the summit, having been thwarted by the weather during an earlier try.

Oral joined CNA in 2008 as senior vice president, application development, and was responsible for guiding business delivery, quality assurance & testing. Prior to joining CNA, Oral served as group senior vice president and mortgage transition executive with Bank of America/ABN AMRO/La Salle Bank Corporation, Chicago. In that role, he was responsible for managing wholesale mortgage operations during the transition of ABN AMRO's wholesale mortgage business to CitiMortgage. Prior to that, he served as the company's senior vice president and head of technology design & engineering. He also held leadership positions with the Chicago Board Options Exchange.

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