Stoll Is New MetLife Individual Biz CIO

When it comes to the art of ramping up big projects, Jeff Stoll has a lot of experience. Early in his career, the recently named CIO of individual business (he replaces Tony Candito) at MetLife (New York, $302.5 billion in assets) worked for News Election Service, which served as the election results news pool for ABC, NBC, CBS, UPI and AP. Every two years, at the time of general elections, "we went from a full-time staff of about 20 people to an organization of more than 120,000," Stoll recalls. "If you want to talk about project management skills, that sure gave them to you!"

Stoll subsequently spent a 16-year stint at Chase Manhattan Bank during a time of "significant cultural change." He later worked for Bessemer Group, AIG, and Nekema (a joint venture of Management Consulting and Kemper) and also served as Kemper's acting CIO.

Arriving at MetLife in 2001 as a vice president of IT within individual business, Stoll joined after it had formally demutualized, but he says his experience at Chase has helped him address the continuing cultural adjustment at the carrier. Stoll recently directed Project LESS-a legacy system simplification project that closed more than 50 legacy systems-and technology and development support for all individual business life product development and illustrations.

As individual business CIO, Stoll will be responsible for partnering with business managers to provide support and necessary technology solutions and application development, as well as responding to demand for common components and platforms, legacy systems access and Web services.

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