Jennifer Charters became Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Lincoln Financial in November 2024, stepping into the role at a pivotal time for the 120-year-old, $18.5 billion financial services company. Recognizing the value the company can derive through innovative use of technology, she has rethought how the firm allocates resources, trimming operational expenses to free up budget for innovation. Charters has emerged as a leader in shaping the company’s enterprise AI strategy while keeping an equally sharp eye on the human transformation required to fully benefit from technological change. A veteran of Flagstar Bank and Ally Financial, she brings deep experience to the role and a conviction that technology leaders must balance bold innovation with regulatory discipline and human-centered leadership.
Lincoln Financial’s Scale and Business Lines
Lincoln Financial employs about 10,000 people across the United States and operates in all 50 states. The company’s offerings span retail life insurance and annuities, as well as workplace services including group benefits like disability and dental coverage, supplemental health insurance, and retirement plan services such as 401(k)s. While many competitors have international operations, Lincoln is firmly focused on the U.S. market, a fact that Charters sees as an advantage in today’s complex global landscape.
Role and Responsibilities
As CIO, Charters oversees the entire technology landscape, from business applications to infrastructure, cloud, cybersecurity and architecture. Her organization manages project portfolios, information security and the governance functions that keep IT aligned to business objectives. She has structured the team around both vertical and horizontal lines of accountability, pairing domain CIOs aligned with business units like retail and workplace services with shared services covering cross-cutting functions. “I always think about verticals and horizontals when I build an organization,” she explained. “It’s important that we have clarity of responsibility back to the business units, and equally important that we have strong shared services in areas like cyber and infrastructure.”
Rethinking IT Investment
A central part of Charters’ agenda has been reshaping the IT budget to distinguish between operational expenses and investment. “There’s the cost of just running what we already have, and then there’s discretionary spend, which is really investment,” she said.
Drawing an analogy to personal retirement portfolios, she argued that IT investments should yield measurable returns. “For every dollar you put into IT, you should be able to get two or three back,” she emphasized. “When you split the budget this way, it’s not just about the total IT spend, it’s about whether the investments are paying off.” She has worked to drive down run costs and reinvest savings into innovation, particularly automation and AI.
Navigating Regulatory Realities
Operating in a highly regulated industry, Charters is pragmatic about the constraints and opportunities that oversight creates. Having moved from banking into insurance, she is attuned to the nuances of federal versus state regulation. “In insurance we have 50 states, 50 sets of laws, and now with AI regulation emerging at the state level, we have to understand what each state is deciding,” she said. For her, regulatory guardrails are less a hindrance than a necessary framework. “Following a process of compliance and oversight is generally a good thing,” she underscored. “It protects companies from going completely outside the bounds of what’s reasonable.”
Building an Enterprise AI Strategy
Artificial intelligence has become a major focus for Lincoln Financial. Charters is helping shape the company’s enterprise-wide AI strategy with support from CEO Ellen Cooper, who has taken a personal interest in understanding the technology’s potential. “AI is not just about the tech that underpins it, it’s about the power to transform the enterprise,” Charters said. She described a dual transformation: at the enterprise level, AI can reshape customer experiences and business processes, while within IT, it can accelerate software development and enhance cybersecurity defenses. To avoid what she calls “random acts of AI,” the company is stepping back to rethink workflows end-to-end, simplifying processes before embedding AI where it adds the most value.
Enabling Learning and Flexibility
Charters is committed to helping colleagues across the business, including non-technologists, understand AI’s implications. Lincoln partners with consulting firms, academic institutions and technology companies from Nvidia to OpenAI to gain external perspectives. “A big part of our job in technology is to keep it real,” she said. “We need to ground expectations while also helping our partners imagine what the future could be.” Rather than locking in with a single large language model, Lincoln is pursuing a model-agnostic approach, choosing tools based on their strengths in areas like code generation or cybersecurity. “We need to remain flexible because the models are evolving so quickly,” she added.
The Human Dimension of Transformation
For Charters, the human side of change is as important as the technological one. She partners closely with the chief HR officer on organizational change, skills development and workforce readiness. “Despite being a technologist, I think it’s so important to think about the human side,” she reflected. “We need to build competency internally, invest in young people and prepare them for roles that may involve overseeing AI agents or developing in new ways.” She emphasized that technology should enable people to spend more time on what matters most. “Lincoln has a line, ‘Make your pastimes last a lifetime,’” she noted. “People don’t want to think about money or technology all the time, they want to enjoy their families and passions. If technology helps them do that; that’s success.”
Charters sees her role as preparing Lincoln Financial for multiple possible futures, balancing the discipline of financial stewardship with the creativity of technological reinvention. “It’s not about predicting the future but being prepared for it,” she said. “AI, automation and new technologies will transform how we work, but we must never lose sight of the fact that humans need human connection.” For Lincoln Financial, that balance between innovation and humanity will shape the next chapter of its 120-year history.
Peter High is President of Metis Strategy, a business and IT advisory firm. He has written three bestselling books, including his latest Getting to Nimble. He also moderates the Technovation podcast series and speaks at conferences around the world. Follow him on Twitter @PeterAHigh.
