eSure head of IT Mark Foulsham

Given the image problems associated with both areas, working in IT in the insurance industry a few years ago would probably have ranked high on the 'careers to avoid' list.

The internet, however, has shaken up the insurance industry where dot-com upstarts like eSure - the one with Michael Winner's "calm down, dear… it's only a commercial" TV adverts - now compete against the established bricks and mortar stalwarts.

Reigate-based eSure was launched in the heady dot-com boom of 2001 as a joint venture between entrepreneur Peter Wood (founder of Direct Line) and banking giant HBOS, offering insurance on the internet and over the phone.

The internet and technologically advanced systems have been a key part of the eSure proposition from the outset in helping to keep premiums low.

Mark Foulsham, eSure's head of IT, is the man in charge of the company's IT strategy, having joined Wood's team back in June 2004. Foulsham is responsible for a team of around 150 people, which includes contractors and some outsourced staff offshore in India.

"We have about 10 to 15 per cent of the team offshore and the way we operate there is use the offshoring organisation HCL as a flexible resource. We meet business demand through ramping up or down and use them in projects where we just don't have the resources to meet deadlines," Foulsham says.

Foulsham brings over 15 years of experience to the role, from a variety of sectors including utilities, consultancy and customer services from his starting point in civil engineering.

"I started life as a civil engineer. It was a great foundation. My first view of IT was being asked to look after the Unix boxes in the university engineering department and I thought I would do a better job in IT," he says.

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From there he spent seven years at WS Atkins and then joined French multinational Bouygues, which at the time owned a variety of businesses including TV stations and electricity and water suppliers.

"My role was IT director for about seven organisations, including South East Water. The big challenge there was having seven MDs, seven FDs and seven chairmen. That stood me in good stead."

After five years Bouygues spun off the UK companies and sold them to Australian bank Macquarie. Foulsham moved to Macquarie to oversee the IT migration and potential buyers for the companies, before landing at eSure.

A huge rugby fan and former player - though he admits to being "too old and knackered" to get on the pitch now - Foulsham also plays the keyboard and piano and sings, occasionally taking to the stage to perform a classic song with an unusual twist.

"Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody is my party piece - in a jazz style," he laughs.

Foulsham has also got into community involvement in his local village and set up a computer club to give something back and so he can meet people and find out what's going on in his area.

One of the advantages of joining what was then still a relatively young and fledgling internet start-up in 2004 was the lack of legacy constraints that hamper many CIOs in more traditional and mature organisations.

"I saw myself joining a company that was a teenager. As a general rule we don't have the constraints that other companies have," he says.

But Foulsham warns even start-ups can quickly become restricted by creating their own legacy systems.

"The challenge is to avoid legacy issues and make the right strategic and architectural choices. It doesn't take long to have a system become a legacy system. Your technology can rapidly become out of date or ineffective."

eSure is primarily an Oracle shop, running the TIA insurance application and BEA's WebLogic platform. The company also benefits from a hosting platform shared within the HBOS group for web and call centre applications - though Foulsham is quick to stress eSure retains a great deal of autonomy over its own IT strategy and architecture.

"We can call on a myriad of services and experience but it's a formal supplier and client relationship with service level agreements and metrics. Within HBOS there is a reasonable level of decentralisation to IT governance. We have an autonomous approach to our IT strategy. It allows us to really drive our technology in line with the business and market conditions without necessarily including unsuitable aspects required by other parts of the HBOS group."

One of the biggest challenges, not only for eSure but the rest of the insurance industry right now, is the aggregator and price comparison sites and ensuring the company can respond in real-time to requests for quotes on the web.

This means, as part of a wider strategic move to a more agile service-oriented architecture (SOA), eSure is using XML to interact with the comparison websites.

"When a comparison site searches for prices across other insurers, those who can return prices faster and with the most information get the business if you appear quickly on that quote screen. The comparison sites we work with have said eSure's XML schema is the best they have seen, with no errors or defects returned. That is where we have had to maintain a cutting edge and innovation," explains Foulsham.

He also believes SOA is moving beyond industry hype. "It is a fundamental part of our architecture. We will introduce it where it matters. We will continue to convert our existing technology to SOA and web service-based technology where appropriate, or wrap existing components in SOA."

eSure recently bought what Foulsham calls an "identity hub" to better manage all the customer information that is currently stored in different parts of the business.

"We will integrate it using SOA components. We store customer information in a number of places and this will act as a managed solution for that customer information."

eSure is also introducing content management technology to make its websites more dynamic so static pages can be updated in near real-time by marketing and sales people using Ajax and JSF [Java Server Faces].

"We will be able to adapt pages based on the customer journey through our sites," he says.

Foulsham is clearly at ease talking about deeper technical aspects of the infrastructure and he says the combination of a technology background and broad business experience is vital for any CIO.

"There is nothing better than having good experience at grass roots level. Keeping a footing in technology is important but detailed technology knowledge isn't a good thing. The CIO needs to understand business challenges and dynamics. The dual knowledge is the perfect balance for a modern CIO," he says.