John Cowan, formerly Managing Director of Pivotal, National Australia Bank Groups Intermediary consultancy business, joins the Board as a non-executive;
Howard Posner, formerly Chief Executive of HBoS General Insurance also joins the Board as a non-executive;
Richard Dixon, currently Chief Operating Officer at First Direct, part of the HSBC Group joins as Operations Director.
This brings the total number of Board appointments to nine since Stuart Pender was appointed as Chief Executive following the MBO in August 2004. The business is now split into seven divisions with five of these being led by new appointments made by Pender since his arrival, namely:-
- Chris Traynor, Sales and Marketing Director, formerly UK Intermediary Sales Director for Prudential
- Vernon Powell, Finance Director, formerly Partner Deloitte and Touche
- Richard Dixon, Operations Director, formerly Chief Operations Director of First Direct
- Eamonn Kennedy, IT and Programme Director, formerly IT Director for Standard Life International
- Mark Davies, Head of Human Resources, formerly Human Resources Director for Scottish Equitable International.
The Board has been led by Mike Christophers as chairman since the MBO. Mike Christophers was a senior partner of KPMG with responsibility for leading KPMG’s Insurance and Actuarial Practice. Roger Lane-Smith, senior partner of DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary, the fourth largest legal firm in the world has also been appointed as a non-executive during the last year.
Commenting on the appointments, Stuart Pender, chief executive said “We are delighted to be able to announce the completion of an exceptionally strong Executive and Non-executive team at Paymentshield. We are the largest independent supplier of general insurance products to the mortgage intermediary sector and have a clear vision on how to maintain and build on this position. We are delighted that this vision and the potential within our business has allowed us to attract such a strong team with a wealth of experience in both the intermediary market and mortgage related products."
John Cowan, non-executive director added “I am delighted to have the opportunity to join Paymentshield at a very exciting period in the growth of the business. Paymentshield are developing some very interesting plans for the mortgage intermediary sector and I very much look forward to working with what is a very strong management team in supporting UK mortgage advisers to build their businesses.”
Howard Posner, non-executive director, commented “I am looking forward to bringing my experience of the general insurance sector to build on Paymentshield’s reputation for innovation in mortgage general insurance. The strength of the team now assembled at Paymentshield is testament to the potential within the Paymentshield business.”
