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Rainmaker: Jim Lloyd brings IT depth to finance

A Rainmaker is someone who makes something happen: at his company, in his career, in his community. The Rainmaker series showcases Department of Information Systems alumni who are catalysts of growth and change. This month we visited with Jim Lloyd, who is Chief Financial Officer for Chase Direct Auto Finance. It's a hugely challenging, demanding and important position -- and according to Lloyd, there's a perfectly logical explanation for why he's the one handling it: He's an IT guy. And he's a 2006 graduate of the W. P. Carey School's Master of Science in Information Management (MSIM) program.

2011-04-03

A Rainmaker is someone who makes something happen: at his company, in his career, in his community. The Rainmaker series showcases Department of Information Systems alumni who are catalysts of growth and change. This month we visited with Jim Lloyd (MSIM 2006), who is Chief Financial Officer for Chase Direct Auto Finance. It's a hugely challenging, demanding and important position — and according to Lloyd, there's a perfectly logical explanation for why he's the one handling it: He's an IT guy. Jim Lloyd went to school to study IT, began his career in IT and, for a good long while, expected to spend the rest of his days working in IT. Things didn't work out quite as he expected — and he couldn't be any happier. After working in various roles on his way up the ladder at Chase, Lloyd was eventually given an opportunity to make a crucially important contribution to the company. Tapping into his IT knowledge and his years of experience with financial lending, Lloyd created a new pricing model that gave executives the ability to much more accurately predict the outcome of each and every loan. The new model, which delivered the kind of micro-level data that had previously been out of reach, was a game-changer for the business. It also helped pave Lloyd's path to his current role. "I rebuilt it in a format that would allow them to look at account-level profitability," he explained. "With the new system, they could really see the profitability on a whole different level. It allows us to have a complex pricing model that enables us to make better assumptions about what's going to happen with that particular loan." Of course, just delivering on the pricing project wasn't enough. Before ascending to his current role, Lloyd had much more to learn. After wrapping up the pricing model, a few stints in other positions, and with the encouragement of some of his mentors, Lloyd accepted an offer to do a stint in the company's finance wing — a move he realized would clearly put him on the path toward bigger and better things. But while he knew the opportunity was a good one, Lloyd also understood that the shift from the mathematical, project-based world of IT to the somewhat predictive, bottom-line world of finance was going to be an adjustment. A big adjustment, actually. He was right. IT and finance "It was very challenging," he said. "I was used to there being a mathematical answer for everything. But on the finance side, it's a different scenario, where you have just to make assumptions on difference pieces of the puzzle. You have to make assumptions about what's going to drive volume and how much volume. That mathematical mindset helps, but isn't as critical to the role as other knowledge." What does come into play, it turns out, is IT knowledge. Lloyd currently serves as Chief Financial Officer for Chase Direct Auto Finance, a fast-growing division of Chase that grew 30 percent last year. In this role, Lloyd signs-off on all of the products myriad of initiatives, including the many projects being implemented to help the company grow its Internet business exponentially. It's a hugely challenging, demanding and important position — and according to Lloyd, there's a perfectly logical explanation for why he's the one handling it: He's an IT guy. And he's a 2006 graduate of the W. P. Carey School's Master of Science in Information Management program. The core mission of the program is to teach professionals how to leverage IT to improve business process. It's not IT for IT's sake, but IT to drive business. ?In my opinion, instilled within the program was the perfect meld of business and technology for today's business needs," Lloyd says. "I can't think of anything in our business environment that doesn't involve some layer of IT," says Lloyd. "Whether it is from the consumer applying through the Internet or the consumers that come through one of the 5,000 branches, every initiative is intertwined with some aspect of technology. With the internet, there is a enormous potential client base that we have yet to tap into. We're looking at the cost-benefit of every single initiative we implement, asking 'How do we get more traffic? How do we convert more? What sites do customers respond better to? What makes them more likely to submit an application?'" Thanks to his background, Lloyd is more equipped to interpret, analyze, and to some extent, forecast those answers. That ability, he says, has served him well as he's looked to advance his career. Preparation for the C-suite Indeed, Lloyd says his IT background, while somewhat unconventional for a CFO, has uniquely prepared him for life in the C-suite. And he believes that other young IT minds will find their perspectives increasingly valuable in the years to come, as more and more businesses become more and more reliant on technology, pretty much across the board. "There is a lot of money stacked against these investments which all have an IT impact at some level, and it usually is a large one." he says. "You need to understand these initiatives in a more granular level to grasp both the technical details while at the same time understand how the business can and will leverage the functionality. If you understand metrics like SEO (Search Engine Optimization) but don't understand the seasonality of a business and how each affects the other, you will never have a comprehensive picture. IT is a tremendous tool that businesses can use but they need people that are well rounded enough to speak to both the business and the technology" He adds: "I spend a great deal of time understanding both sides allowing me to translate for the business, the IT needs, as well as translating for the business, the IT benefits as well as constraints. When you can talk the other non-IT executives through the technical details from a business perspective, that's where it all comes together. You can make it make sense for them. Without that perspective, they're just looking at the dollars and cents or trying to use the wrong technology to solve a given business need. " For his part, thanks to his rise to CFO, Lloyd says he now has a fuller picture of the business world in general — and his abilities to succeed in it. Having had a taste of the executive suite, he says he'd eventually like to take the next step and run an entire product. And though he knows such a role would demand even more time and energy, he's hardly shrinking from the challenge.  

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