New stewardship for one of Northern Ireland’s largest and most innovative companies

CONNECTED recently sat down with Allstate NI’s new Managing Director, Dr Stephen McKeown, to hear more about the company’s work in the North West, the importance of disruption to staying ahead in modern day industry, and harnessing talent to deliver for customers.

Away from his job as Allstate’s Vice President of International and Managing Director of Allstate Northern Ireland, Dr Stephen McKeown frequently takes on another challenging role – as an RNLI volunteer aboard the Red Bay lifeboat, stationed on the Antrim coastline.

The crew is on call all year round, coming to the aid of those in peril on stormy and unpredictable waters yet Stephen is unassuming about his role, genuinely surprised when the subject is brought up.

“You’ve done your research,” he counters, before modestly confirming, “Yes, I’m out regularly on our all-weather off-shore lifeboat.”

He must have experienced his fair share of hairy moments? “Yes,” he replies. “But the thing is, if you were out there in trouble, you’d want to know that people were coming to help you so for me it’s an easy decision.

“It’s an opportunity to give back and there’s a group of fantastic volunteers who give up their time to provide that service.”

Though Stephen doesn’t directly make the parallels, there are obvious ones with his work with insurance giant Allstate when he talks about how the company protects its millions of customers by predicting risk, offering reassuring solutions and coming to the rescue in a crisis. Evidently too, he thrives in a focused, energised, and dedicated team – on and off the water.

Shortly after joining Allstate in 2018, the Glens of Antrim native was appointed its first Chief Information Officer outside of North America. He managed teams across seven international centres, delivering transformation through data, machine learning, and AI. “My background is as an engineer, but I’ve always worked between engineering and the business side, usually around innovative disruption and digital transformation,” he says.

He describes Allstate as “a fantastic business”, citing the Forbes 100 company’s impressive numbers. “We operate globally, with the US our main market where one in every eight households has an Allstate policy. We serve more than 16 million customers with 190 million protection plans.”

Allstate NI, which has more than 2,400 employees across offices in Derry and Belfast, performs a crucial function supplying software development, data, AI, cybersecurity, and finance to its parent company.

It is “seen as one of the crown jewels in Allstate’s delivery capability,” says Stephen, with employees based in the North West playing “an incredible part. There is a wonderful culture of people. The talent is truly outstanding, and I mean that in terms of a global stage.

“It’s a stunning part of the world and I love that we have jobs and opportunities available so that people can grow and develop in their communities. That hasn’t always been the case. And we always get way more in return for any of the investments we make. Our people repay us tenfold.”

Stephen is an instinctive problem-solver – it’s what he loves about engineering – and he recognises that innovative quality in the North West teams too. “There’s just that natural curiosity that’s a part of the psyche of so many people here”.

Cutting-edge technology is vital to Allstate, which is ranked 4th in Wall Street Journal’s Top 250 for innovative. “Allstate always knows where it wants to position itself in the next five, 10, 20 years,” says Stephen. Alongside “traditional insurance products for cars and homes”, it now offers “a circle of protection” with policies protecting against 21st century catastrophe like identity theft.

“Our aim is to protect our customers from life’s uncertainties. This mobile phone” – he holds it aloft on the Zoom call – “is an essential part of people’s life so we added device protection, but we also added future-proofing protection where if you get your digital identity stolen – an incredibly disruptive, traumatic experience – Allstate helps you recover from that.”

He’s proud of Allstate’s reputation as an industry disruptor. “You don’t disrupt without reason. The first thing you ask is ‘what do customers value?’ If we are not providing that value, then we are not doing what we should be. Recognising the need for device protection for a mobile or digital identity protection would certainly be seen as very disruptive by our competitors. But it’s a far-sighted move based on knowing our customers.”

Stephen did a PhD in digital systems at Queen’s University Belfast. He has an Executive MBA from the Kellogg School of Management in Chicago and WHU in Koblenz, Germany. A founder of the Big Data Belfast technology conference, he has acted as a European Commission industry expert for the €80bn Horizon and Eurostars innovation programmes and held advisory roles on NI’s Digital ICT Strategy Group and UK Technology Board. He spent five years as CEO of Analytics Engines.

He “learns something new every day from the people I’m lucky to get to work with” and is passionate about all staff “having opportunities to excel”. He led diversity initiatives that earned Allstate a Gold Diversity Mark. It was also named Workplace of the Year at the Digital DNA Awards – “everyone’s now designated hybrid”.

Flexible working benefits Stephen too. Despite a global career, he lives with his wife and their two children “on a very beautiful part of our coastline”.

Away from his work duties, he sails to relax. “It’s so peaceful – and when you travel away and then come back, you really appreciate just how much we have here.”