CIOs Take the Wheel in Guiding Digital Payments Transformations

Watch more: Digital Shift: One Inc’s Elizabeth Hoemeke

As digital payments reshape how money moves and data flows, the chief information officer (CIO) is emerging as both architect and bridge, balancing innovation, regulation and risk in equal measure.

For One Inc CIO Elizabeth Hoemeke, that means leading the charge toward faster, safer and more flexible payment experiences while steering a traditionally conservative insurance industry toward a more connected digital future.

Seeing Around Corners

Hoemeke told PYMNTS in a recent interview that technology leaders must stay “ahead of what’s around the corner” and anticipate what the next 18 to 24 months will bring. That challenge, she said, is amplified by the speed of change and the exponential increase in how quickly people must now adopt new technologies.

“The insurance industry is very conservative, very concerned about money movement, customer data and privacy,” she said, with a nod to One Inc’s playing field. “We have to balance innovation with that conservative mindset and meet them where they are, getting them to adopt new technologies and be open to integrating AI.”

Balancing Innovation, Regulation and Risk

Serving as a bridge between IT, product development, security and compliance teams means constant trade-offs. “It’s a daily struggle for any CIO,” Hoemeke said. Security must protect the company, clients and data, but security has to be weighed against revenue goals and customer experience.

She described a deliberate allocation of effort: “We try to have between 50% and 70% product development, and the rest technical-debt remediation, security, vulnerability management … all the things essential for a healthy platform.” Tackling those incrementally prevents “all-hands-on-deck” emergencies when deadlines arrive.

Future-Proofing Without Overbuilding

The quest to “future-proof” systems can be costly, Hoemeke cautioned. “Trying to think of all the things that might happen later and building for every potential scenario isn’t a good use of resources,” she said. Instead, her team designs for flexibility without over-engineering.

One Inc has shifted fully to Microsoft Azure and leans on cloud-native and API-first architectures. “Engineers love to build everything,” she said. “But sometimes it’s smarter to use something commercially available, especially if it’s not core IP.” The goal is to invest engineering time where it differentiates the company, not in maintaining infrastructure that cloud providers already supply.

Digitizing Insurance Payments

Insurance payments remain heavily check-based, but that is changing fast. “Digital wallets are now used by 90% of Americans,” Hoemeke said, noting that only 4% of customers still prefer checks. “Our whole mission is to digitize the payment experience so people don’t have to wait 10 days for a check.”

Consumers now expect options: Zelle, Venmo, direct-to-bank transfers or virtual cards. “It’s important from a customer-experience perspective that we give those choices to both consumers and vendors,” she told PYMNTS. Beyond convenience, security is another driver. Check fraud, after all, is still rapidly increasing, and checks are the most insecure form of payment.

Meeting customers where they are matters: “Seventy-eight percent of our customers are really happy when they get a disbursement through an instant payment because they get it and forget it,” she said. “They don’t have to wait and wonder where it is.”

Building Partnerships and a Trusted Ecosystem

The CIO’s job, Hoemeke emphasized, is larger than any one department. “It’s impossible to know everything,” she said. “You have to surround yourself with experts.” That includes partnerships with technology leaders such as Mastercard and other trusted advisors who can “bring the art of the possible.”

Education is equally critical. Hoemeke is exploring in-person artificial intelligence (AI) courses to deepen her understanding of large-language models and how to deploy them responsibly. “We need to make sure we’re using the right technology in the right way, not just for the sake of saying we’re using AI,” she said. Staying ahead also means keeping pace with “ever-changing state-by-state insurance regulations,” a task too large for any individual.

Defining Innovation in Three Horizons

Hoemeke frames innovation across three horizons. The first involves existing technologies not yet adopted internally, such as robotic-process automation, which One Inc has implemented using UiPath to improve operational efficiency. The second horizon uses existing tools in new ways, like combining RPA with outbound voice-response systems to create a novel payment capability. The third horizon is the yet unimagined: “Things that are so far out there that nobody’s dreamed them up yet,” she told PYMNTS.

Knowing which horizon to prioritize depends on that network of trusted partners and continuous scanning for “emerging, exponential technologies” as they reach markets.

The CIO’s Expanding Mandate

For Hoemeke, the evolving CIO role is defined by agility, collaboration and continuous learning. “It’s bigger than one person,” she said. “It takes a village, an ecosystem of trusted advisors, to stay compliant, secure and ready for what’s next.”