Robert Selander - President
Robert has over 27 years’ experience as
a lead systems developer in a variety of industries including
15 years working with life insurance and annuity systems. Twelve
of those years were spent working with the TriMark LANmark and
Transcend Systems.
For American Express, he has been responsible
for performing technical analysis on the Trimark system, designing
the best approach to satisfy the requirements of the Business
Requirements Documents, estimating project efforts, writing program
specifications, and developing software.
At John Hancock, Robert played a lead role in
designing and implementing virtually all of the major development
efforts performed by Ashton Consulting for their version of the
LANmark System.
At Sun Life of Canada, he participated in the
conversion of a variable annuity product from a mainframe system
to the TriMark LANmark System and designed variable payout functionality
in Sun Life’s version of LANmark. He was also the team leader
for a number of major enhancements to their mainframe annuity
processing system.
Wayne Martin - Vice President,
Technology
Development
Wayne has over 16 years of financial systems experience
including 12 years working with life insurance and annuity systems,
10 of which were spent working with the TriMark LANmark and Transcend
Systems.
Wayne is responsible for overseeing the technology
aspects of all of Ashton’s development activities. He is
responsible for recommending hardware and environmental solutions
for the clients and takes a lead in helping to resolve technical
issues.
For American Express, Wayne has been a lead technical
developer for designing and implementing several development efforts
and was the lead technical consultant to AMEX for their successful
upgrade of the LANmark System. He has also performed a variety
of hands-on programming functions and has been the lead resource
for providing assistance to the staff responsible for documents.
At John Hancock, Wayne was a lead technical developer
for designing and implementing multiple major LANmark development
efforts and was the lead technical consultant for the successful
upgrade of the LANmark application in 1999.
As an employee of Sun Life of Canada, he gained
in-depth exposure to the TriMark LANmark System and was a key
developer for a number of major enhancements to both their mainframe
annuity processing system and the TriMark LANmark System.
Dante Pintabone – Project Manager,
Senior Consultant
Dante is President of Pintabone Consulting, Inc.
He has agreed to partner with Ashton Consulting Group, LTD., to
assist with overseeing Ashton’s client accounts. He is the
primary contact for all new and existing accounts and plays a
major role in working out the details of the Company’s contractual
arrangements.
For the AMEX account, Dante has played a key
role in scoping project requests and providing estimates, as well
as managing projects to ensure they are meeting the needs of the
client and that they remain on track. He has also been responsible
for creating design documents and test materials, and for performing
hands-on testing for several projects to certify that they are
ready for delivery to the client.
Dante also travels onsite to Minneapolis to assist
with project installations and initial shakedown, and to conduct
training for the AMEX staff.
Before starting his own consulting practice,
Pintabone Consulting, Inc., in the fall of 1999, Dante worked
for 23 years at John Hancock, where he played a major role on
a variety of projects to implement new insurance applications
and new insurance and annuity products.
As a Project Manager, Dante worked on the project
for creating the mainframe based FlexV System, which handles the
administration of the majority of John Hancock’s Variable
Universal Life products. He was Project Manager for the creation
of John Hancock’s first Corporate Owned Life Insurance application,
for implementing the NaviSys LifeCAD/MP System, and the TriMark
LANmark System.
In 1997, Dante became the Director of Retail
Client Server Product Administration Systems at John Hancock,
and in 1998, he was appointed Program Director for John Hancock’s
Product Processing Program, a multi-year program to beef up John
Hancock’s manufacturing capabilities via a variety of environmental
changes including the purchase of two new software applications,
the McCamish VPAS COLI System and the Leverage Group’s PolicyLink
System.
Carl Kenney - Project Manager/
Senior
Consultant
A former Systems Manager at Sun Life, Carl has
over 23 years of systems management and business analysis experience
in the life insurance and annuities industry. Experienced in all
phases of the systems development life cycle, he has successfully
managed a number of project teams working on a variety of different
technical platforms, including several years working with the
TriMark LANmark application.
For American Express, Carl has functioned as
the release manager for Ashton and has been responsible for ensuring
that program versions for new releases are correct, preparing
complete installation documentation, preparation of the installation
package, and performing the on-site installation. Carl also has
performed programming and system test functions.
Carl joined the Ashton Consulting Group in 1999
as a lead business analyst on the John Hancock LANmark application
support team. Within a few weeks, he was asked to assume the role
of Systems Manager for the team. Carl was a major contributor
to a number of the team’s successes, including the upgrade
of the LANmark application. He was equally successful managing
project teams and working as a hands-on business analyst.
Catherine Martin - Project Manager/
Senior Consultant
Cathy has over 11 years experience working with
life and annuity products and applications.
For American Express, Cathy has been a key resource
who assists in determining project scope and providing estimates,
and participates in all phases of system implementation.
She amplifies
in detail the requirements for the project and assembles those
details into a well-constructed document, based on models of its
events, as-is and to-be processes. This document serves as the
foundation for the detailed design document.
Cathy also develops and documents a testing strategy for the project,
so appropriate facilities can be put in place at the right time
so early testing activities can be commenced. She manages projects
to ensure they are meeting the needs of the client and remain
on track. She develops the test conditions, test scripts, and
expected results for each new system requirement. Cathy also performs
hands-on testing, and validates results to certify that the project
is ready for delivery to the client. She also develops all of
the training documentation.
Cathy travels onsite to Minneapolis to assist with the project
installations and initial shakedown, and
to conduct training for the American Express staff.
Before joining Ashton Consulting Group, Cathy worked for 7 1/2
years as an employee of John Hancock Financial Services,
where she gained in-depth experience in all aspects of life and
annuity products, both as an IS service provider and as a customer
of IS services.
In 1996, she helped form a new business unit to service John Hancock’s
Corporate Owned Life Insurance business sold through the “M”
Financial Group and more prominent agencies and brokers. With
the majority of the policies housed on the Trimark LANmark System,
this unit currently handles over $250 million in premiums.
Due to her extensive knowledge of high-end, complex insurance
products and their associated service needs, Cathy was asked in
1998 to join the team responsible for implementing the McCamish
VPAS COLI System. Her responsibilities included working with her
business partners to gather and document requirements and working
with the developers to identify technical solutions. In her role
as Project Manager, she was responsible for developing estimates
and project schedules; test plans and test scripts; and also performed
a variety of hands-on testing activities.
Cathy also traveled onsite to Atlanta to work with developers
in creating the detailed design document.
Guy Petrover - Lead Developer
Guy joined Ashton Consulting Group in early 1999
as a lead developer and was immediately put to work on the team
that supports John Hancock’s TriMark LANmark application.
He has used his outstanding technical skills to help solve a number
of issues and move projects forward. He was a key player in working
out the details of John Hancock’s upgrade of the LANmark
application, having designed and implemented a number of the utilities
used to perform the necessary conversions.
For American Express, Guy has been a lead technical
consultant. During the upgrade to MAGIC, Guy wrote a number of
‘C’ language utilities that performed mass changes
to the MAGIC control files to update the Trimark system’s
file locking and access strategies, along with a variety of other
functions.
Guy has been a technical lead on all of the development
projects that Ashton has completed for AMEX, playing a key role
on each project: participating in design activities, writing programming
specs, programming the changes, and ensuring that technical issues
are resolved quickly.
Marsha McCormick – Document Specialist
Marsha has twenty years of experience in the annuity
and insurance industries, having worked for Sun Life of Canada,
Keyport Life Insurance Company, and Star Insurance Company. She
joined Ashton Consulting in 2001 to provide assistance to the
staff at American Express who are responsible for the correspondence
system.
In the LANmark System, she has extensive background
in creating and maintaining documents supporting the sale and
servicing of annuity products, having programmed documents and
macros in WordPerfect 5.1 and 7.0 macro/merge language, and database
variables in MAGIC. This LANmark experience totals ten years.
During Keyport’s conversion from the LANmark
annuity system to Transcend (DOS WP5.1 to UNIX WP 7.0), Marsha
assumed responsibility for the conversion, reprogramming, unit
testing, and implementation of over 400 documents. She also worked
with the testing team to ensure integrity of data and Y2K compliance,
and to troubleshoot data problems.
At Star Insurance (now e-Policy), Marsha developed
software and forms for insurance applications, including auto,
garage, inland marine, commercial, etc.
For American Express, Marsha has been the key
Ashton resource for assisting with the design and modification
of a variety of WordPerfect documents.
Her background also includes years of technical
writing (end-user, systems, standards and procedures) including
project and resource management roles. In addition, she does some
web design and HTML.
