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Insurer Suncorp NZ and NZX-listed media company NZME have both appointed new executives to head technology delivery in general and AI rollouts in particular.
At Suncorp, Debbie Mills will become general manager of technology in November having held leadership roles at ASB since departing Perth-based Bankwest in 2019, where she held roles including general manager of transformation.
Suncorp NZ CEO Jimmy Higgins said Mills joined the business at a time key technology transformation initiatives were getting underway to improve customer and employee experience.
“Debbie’s experience within the financial industry and the work she’s been involved in across technology, transformation, change management and customers will help us progress our commitment to be a sustainable business that is there for our customers in the long-term,” he said.
Technology played a key role in helping to improve the way Suncorp did things and the experience for staff, customers and partners, Higgins said.
Following the sale of Suncorp Bank and the announced sale of New Zealand Life, the broader business is positioning itself as a focused trans-Tasman general insurer.
Suncorp’s published 2025-27 strategy includes investment in two strategic initiatives: platform modernisation and operational transformation.
These will focus on continuing to upgrade the organisation’s core systems, including its policy administration system, and deploying artificial intelligence.
In June, Suncorp Group’s Australia-based CIO Adam Bennett said the company had been using “traditional AI and machine learning” and was on the cusp of scaling AI use cases across the business.
“We’re piloting the use of GenAI to support our claims managers by summarising reams of data and generating contextualised claims information,” he said.
However, this wasn’t coming at the expense of a personalised customer experience, he said.
“We’re creating learning and development opportunities for our people to engage with AI as well,” Bennett said.
“We’ve built an environment for them to experiment safely with productivity tools like Microsoft Copilot, as well as opportunities to put AI to the test to solve real customer problems though our “hackathons”, AI conferences and formal training and reskill programmes.”
Mark Atherton had been acting in the GM technology role and would continue to do so until Mills joined the company. He would then return to his role of executive manager, infrastructure and operations.
New Zealand Media and Entertainment (NZME), meanwhile, announced the appointment of Katie Macdiarmid to the newly created role of chief information officer.
She is charged with bringing digital platform and technology capability together under one leader for the first time to create a strong business-wide strategy.
Macdiarmid has more than 25 years of experience in digital and technology roles across multiple industries in the UK and New Zealand. She has been at NZME since 2017 and held the role of GM digital products for the past four years.
She will continue to lead digital delivery as well as taking on responsibility for NZME’s technology team and ecosystem, led by chief technology officer Bill Hays.
Macdiarmid will also lead NZME’s enterprise AI developments and ensure it is weaved into NZME’s strategy.
“The media market continues to change rapidly with traditional and digital media platforms converging, driven by the pace of technology change and the rise of generative AI,” NZME chief digital and publishing officer Carolyn Luey said.
Macdiarmid said she was looking forward to leading NZME’s technology and digital teams and working closely with key partners to deliver on the company’s roadmaps.