Everlake's Becky Kennedy forges a new path: Women in Insurance Leadership 2022
In November 2021, Allstate sold Allstate Life Insurance Company to entities managed by Blackstone. The new company was renamed Everlake Life Insurance Company under CEO Doney Largey. Becky Kennedy, VP of life and annuity operations at Allstate at the time, worked on the logistics for the sale and the transition, including establishing the operations team to move from Allstate to Everlake. That’s when Largey asked her to take a role at Everlake.
“The diligence process was basically a long interview between the two of us,” Kennedy recalls. “He was asking my opinions on what I thought we should do with the operations, both day-to-day and longer term, and what we should do with the technology.”
Now, she is senior vice president and chief operations officer at Everlake. The company is still in the process of transitioning its operations from Allstate, under a Transition Services Agreement, to a Third-Party Administrator. This transition is expected to be complete in 2024. Everlake has more than 1.7 million policies in force with more than $1.2 billion in annual premiums.
“It really is all hands on deck,” Kennedy says of this transition. “Many of the people on my team have deep subject matter expertise, but they may need guidance and assistance in different ways at different points in time. That’s the approach that I take toward leadership. My goal is to create the conditions where others can be their most effective and successful, helping them to develop, while also ensuring we’re collectively meeting our policyholder and investor needs.”
Kennedy began her career as an actuary at Hewitt Associates, working in that capacity consulting for pension plans. Starting in 1999 at Allstate, she took on various roles in different areas over her years there. These included product pricing, asset liability management, investment operations, and risk management. Then she returned to the insurance side from the financial side, working on in-force management of Allstate policies. Kennedy brought that experience in financial and investment matters, gained in part during the 2008 financial crisis, back to the insurance side with her, eventually becoming the leader of Allstate’s life insurance and annuity operations. In 2020, she faced the pandemic-related challenge of transitioning an organization of close to 600 operations professionals overnight to a work-from-home environment with minimal disruption to customers, the sales force, and employees.
“I’ve been very fortunate to work with wonderful leaders that gave me great opportunities to learn and grow over my career. They encouraged me to take opportunities that were challenging and candidly, that I wasn’t always sure I was ready for. However, each opportunity has developed me in new and beneficial ways – and I’m passionate about doing the same for. my team. I want to ensure that they also have the opportunity to learn and grow, and I want to help them connect the dots across the organization and the industry – just like I was helped.” she says.
