Peter Muggleston is new CIO at Tower Insurance

Peter Muggleston is joining Tower Insurance in December as chief information officer.

Muggleston is currently CIO at Foodstuffs North Island.

He has held a range of business technology executive roles at ASB, Sovereign Assurance, Peace Software and Fletcher Challenge.

He replaces Glenn Vade, who is returning to Sydney.

Transforming Tower into a company that challenges insurance industry norms requires finding the best leaders you can, and after a global search, the company found the best right here in New Zealand, says Tower CEO Richard Harding.

Muggleston is one of the leaders in the 2018 CIO100, the annual report on the most innovative and transformative digital and technology executives in New Zealand.

In an interview with CIO New Zealand, he says walking a day in the customer’s shoes is still one of the most vital lessons anyone needs to learn.

Early in his career, he was running the infrastructure team for the offshore Business Unit of Shell Exploration in the Netherlands.

As part of a Windows upgrade we were increasing the ram in every PC in the business via a contract partner, he says.

“When it came to the PCs on the oil rigs, I decided that our team should do it ourselves and spend time understanding how our technology was working for our stakeholders.

“Back then, the only form of communication was line of sight microwave connections daisy chained across the North Sea.

“As we flew from platform to platform it became clear what a lousy experience we had created. More importantly, as we spent more time working with them we talked to the engineers and before long had identified how easy it would be to piggy-back fibre on the back of pipelines they were laying or maintaining.

“Long story short – that’s what we did. It sounds trivial, but it wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t got on the helicopter, shared our stakeholders’ pain and joined the dots with our engineering colleagues,” he says.