Harleysville Insurance names two execs

HARLEYSVILLE, PA—Stephen J. Byrne has been named vice president of agency and field automation technology for Harleysville Insurance. In this position, he oversees the design and implementation of packaged information systems, the integration of software architectures that support Harleysville’s core business functions, and the development of the company’s agency and field technologies.
Byrne joined Harleysville as assistant vice president and chief architect in 2006. Prior to that, he served as director of enterprise architecture for Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company, and was an independent consultant providing information technology (IT) architecture and e-business solutions to financial services and software organizations, such as MBNA America, First USA and Shared Medical Systems. Byrne began his career as a software engineer with Lockheed Martin. In total, he has more than 15 years of IT industry experience, and holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Villanova University.
Thomas D. Kern has been named vice president of operations processes, testing and quality for Harleysville Insurance. In this position, he is responsible for all operations support systems and services, which includes quality assurance, processing workflow and training, imaging, quality control, remittance processing, and output distribution.
Kern joined Harleysville in 1979 as an insurance trainee and moved to the programming staff in 1981. He was named programmer analyst in 1984, programming supervisor in 1988, programming manager in 1995, assistant secretary and manager of information systems in 1999, and assistant vice president of information systems in 2006. He holds degrees from Philadelphia Biblical University and Biblical Theological Seminary.