In his 25 years at Alfa, Mike served in the Tax Department, Business Development, and Business Intelligence and Analytics groups. His focus on mergers and acquisitions led to our acquiring Trexis in 2005. In 2014, he was named CIO and was asked to take over the LIFT project, which stands for Leveraging Innovation for Tomorrow and was the catalyst to integrating cutting-edge technology to better serve our company and our customers.

But this innovation didn’t come quickly. “When I got to Alfa from Ernst & Young [in 1995], it was like going back in time. We had no internet connectivity, no email and most everything was done with paper. When I started, I asked for my email address and they told me ‘we don’t have that yet.’” Mike recalls, “Today, we have moved to Quote and Bind online, DocuSign, Pay by Text and many other technology improvements. The implementation of Guidewire has allowed us to leverage our data and build a competitive auto and homeowner product. We now can design, price, build and have a new product to market in months rather than years as the process was in the past.” 

Mike is known for bringing people together, in his personal and professional life, and is skilled at connecting departments and employees to work together and address enterprise-level problems.

“We are all here to help our customers in difficult  situations. Being able to provide technologies that make that experience better is what we are asked to do on a daily basis. We have to continually get better and improve the quality of our service for our customers. They deserve the best possible solution that we can provide within a reasonable cost.” Mike says.

His can-do approach to complicated situations is one that keeps us striving toward innovation to better serve our customers. We are proud of the work Mike Rowell continues to do and congratulate him on his award of Alabama’s CIO of the Year.