Allianz Life Promotes Bill Zajac to Director of Operational Excellence

MINNEAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America (Allianz Life^®) named Bill Zajac as the new director of Operational Excellence (OPEX), Organizational Sourcing and Business Reengineering in the Administration division. In this role, Zajac will drive process and quality assurance improvements to deliver financial benefits across the company. He will lead the OPEX program - Allianz Life’s Business Management Strategy - based on the improvement methodologies of lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, and Scientific Management. Zajac reports to Rollie Renstrom, vice president for Organizational Sourcing and Business Reengineering.

“We are pleased to have him on our team to drive quality and process alignment within the organization, enhancing the overall customer experience.”

“Bill brings extensive experience to this position and is an expert in the quality assurance field,” said Renstrom. “We are pleased to have him on our team to drive quality and process alignment within the organization, enhancing the overall customer experience.”

Zajac joined Allianz Life in 2005 as a principal consultant for the business process improvement department. He trained nearly 200 employees in the OPEX methodology and led the creation of standard operating procedures for product design across the company for more than 140 stakeholders. Most recently, he was a senior manager in Quality Assurance where he led cost and quality enhancing analyses and increased quality assurance customer satisfaction by 21%. Zajac also improved the Quality Assurance team processes reducing cycle time and supporting the lean sigma training for 75% of his team.

Before joining Allianz Life, Zajac was a business process engineer with G&K Services, Inc., an apparel and facility services company out of Minneapolis, where he co-led process analyses and business case design. Prior to that, he was a project manager for more than four years with Wilsons Leather where he led process analyses, design, training, and change management to reduce labor hours and cycle time.

Zajac holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in accounting from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn. He has earned a General Electric (GE) Black Belt certification and was promoted to a Master Black Belt certification.

About Allianz Life
Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America, one of FORTUNE’s 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2012, has been keeping its promises since 1896. Today, it carries on that tradition, helping Americans achieve their retirement income and protection goals with a variety of annuities and life insurance products. As a leading provider of fixed index annuities, Allianz Life is part of Allianz SE, a global leader in the financial services industry with 142,000 employees worldwide. More than 78 million private and corporate customers rely on Allianz knowledge, global reach, and capital strength to help them make the most of financial opportunities.