AUL Corp. thinks so highly of chief information officer Jose Fleites that the F&I provider promoted him this week to a dual executive position.

AUL president and chief executive officer Jimmy Atkinson appointed Fleites to the role of chief operating officer in addition to retaining his duties as CIO.

According to a company announcement, Fleites will be applying his leadership and experience to the firm’s daily operations including claims, service support, operations and human resources.

Fleites joined AUL as CIO in 2018 and quickly transformed the firm’s IT systems, implementing new hardware and software that underly the firm’s customer relationship management and claims processing systems. These new tools provided AUL with the foundation and bandwidth to grow AUL from a single product vehicle service contract (VSC) provider into a one partner, total F&I solution for thousands of dealers across the country.

“Since his arrival at AUL, Jose has been a visionary. He quickly and clearly identified the critical areas where we needed to modernize, constructed an amazing team to carry out the mission, and delivered beyond our most ambitious goals,” Atkinson said.

“With these new systems underlying our core businesses, it was a natural transition to align the functions of claims and service support under one senior leader,” Atkinson went on to say.