(US and Canada) Brad Burke, American Family Insurance Chief Engineering and Data Officer, speaks with Michael C. Fillios, IT Ally Founder & CEO, about the culture at American Family Insurance, its business structure, people, and governance.

Burke describes the organization as a combination of five different companies with a primary focus on the agency business. It white labels or rebrands the home and auto insurance to other companies. According to Burke, the organization’s channels are dynamic whether they serve through an independent agency, digital, or direct to partner with embedded insurance.

Sharing his experience as a data leader, Burke says that insurance, as a business, does not necessarily have velocity, but it does have variety. He mentions that this brings along a lot of challenges due to the different types of information. And, he adds that insurance companies have tons of legacy insurance systems because it is hard to turn off an old insurance system due to regulatory obligations.

Speaking further about the business, Burke states that American Family is omnichannel with a decentralized approach, focused on providing the right experience to customers based on the channel they are coming through. Each of the operating companies has a head of digital, he says, and part of his team’s responsibility is to create integration architecture that allows them to do things digitally. Burke believes that the digital edge of systems is not built to last because people want to change the experience.

When asked about the culture and his team, Burke says that he thinks of himself as a business person whose role is in IT. He tries to instill that thought into the IT teams as well since they are part of the business, and are trying to make the business and its customers more successful.

Speaking on data governance, Burke mentions that when he joined the organization, it was about people protecting data. A big part of the IT team is still about ensuring that people are using data appropriately and have access to it, he says.

Concluding, Burke adds that the business side needs to work together with IT for proper data governance. He stresses that they need to embrace being not only data consumers but data producers who are governing the data.