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Kris Borer started as Chief Technology Officer with MetLife Legal Plans just as the pandemic began. He joined our staff during the acquisition of a digital services company of which he was a principal. Due to the unique situation of nationwide lockdown, our company required an immediate strategy to move to a fully remote work environment. Kris connected effectively with key colleagues (100% virtual) across the entire MetLife Legal Plans’ organization to ensure we had no business interruption. He quickly established himself as a leader as he created effective hybrid and remote work solutions for all employees.
MetLife Legal Plans’ is the nation’s largest provider of group legal plan employee benefits. Our customer base includes five million Americans working at more than 5,000 employers and organizations. Kris improved the IT services and online capabilities for our members and group customers during the acquisition of his former digital services company called Willing.com. This was a crucial acquisition that supported the growth trajectory of MetLife Legal Plans. He seamlessly integrated the merged company’s development team and technology platforms into use.
“The Willing.com platform serves a digitally native audience unlikely to go see an attorney for estate planning services,” said Todd Katz, Executive Vice President, Group Benefits at MetLife, Inc. “Willing complements our existing legal services offering, and positions us to lead the industry by offering customers more choices in how they address their estate planning needs.”
Lastly, Kris made a plan to re-build the tech department from the ground-up!
With his vision and goals set, Kris started the exciting work of building the technology for MetLife Legal Plans throughout the next two years. Through 2021/22 planning, one of the many goals—to make a significant leap forward by moving all on-site data, IT resources, applications, and workload infrastructure to be a fully-cloud based infrastructure will be complete by summer 2023. This IT legacy modernization is an approach that will allow for adaptions based on current priorities and future business/member needs,
building on a flexible roadmap for future innovation.
This customer-service mindset and hands-on leadership is natural to Kris. He is dedicated, focused, and hardworking, yet humble as he helps others. Kris believes that his role is to create a company’s tech culture and supportive framework for his team to execute. A Chief Technology Officer also needs to remove friction for employees so that they can deliver their best work and grow professionally and personally. He has set a confident and high standard. Working remotely added an additional layer of complexity. The objectives Kris accomplished throughout 2021-22 is a feat to be extremely proud of, and these notable metrics confirm his success.
Kris and team enhanced our self-service digital estate planning application to improve the user-experience. In 2021, the team enhanced the Digital Estate Planning (DEP) to include real-time video notary services (where allowed by state law). This online notary component streamlined the finalization of wills, trusts and power of attorney documents, especially in critical emergency health situations.
MetLife Legal Plans is proud of the diversity landscape of the technology team that reflects the company’s commitment to diverse hiring. Over the last two years, the team’s demographic composition has changed dramatically with new hires. A diverse team of talent emerged as Kris created a space that encouraged applicants from high-level expertise across backgrounds on the tech teams. From 2021 to 2022 more women (30%) joined the MLP tech team, and a large percentage of the women (38%) are supervisors or team leads. Women have a strong presence in both technology and executive leadership at MetLife Legal Plans.
This exemplifies merely his opening act at MetLife Legal Plans. Kris is our technology chief, a generous mentor, and true innovator. He mindfully seeks solutions for our company in the face of rapid growth and constant change. Kris built a team of innovators who continually evolve to meet our customers’ needs.
Nomination Title: Kris Borer, Chief Technology Officer
