People on the move: Principal Insurance; Assetz Capital; Roger Hannah & Co; ParkCloud
Principal Insurance has appointed Paul Hughes to the newly created boardroom role of sales and operations director.
Hughes has joined the Manchester-headquartered group from Bollington Insurance Group with whom he spent over four years, first as direct sales director and then wholesale director.
He began his insurance career as a team manager at RAC in 1986 where he worked alongside Principal’s founder and managing director, Dave Bowcock. In 1996 he joined Direct Line and over nearly 20-years with the group and its then parent, RBS Insurance, took on a variety of management positions spanning sales, training, operational and customer service.
Hughes said: “It’s an exciting time to be joining Principal. This is not only a dynamic and fast-growing business, but a rapidly maturing one with an excellent management team which understands that to successfully manage growth you need to reinvest in both talent and technology.”
Hughes’s appointment is part of a wider strengthening of Principal’s executive and senior management teams.
As part of that restructure, the group has promoted Jackie Bircham and Matthew Byrne to new roles.
Byrne, who has been with the group since it was founded in 2011, has been promoted to head of distribution, reporting to Hughes.
He will oversee Principal’s products, pricing and IT departments and have responsibility for day-to-day liaison with insurers, aggregators and technology partners. He previously led the group’s fast-growing commercial insurance operation.
Bircham, who was group operations manager has been appointed as head of business transformation, charged with overseeing the development of new policies and procedures in line with the group’s continued growth.
She will report to HR, training and compliance director Penny Wardale who joined Principal from Autonet last August.
The management changes have been prompted by an acceleration in the group’s already rapid growth.
It has created nearly 100 new jobs over the past 18 months, with more than 130 staff now employed at its Manchester, Lancaster and Dublin sites. These now serve over 40,000 policyholders across its specialist lines which include classic and high-performance cars, motorcycle, van and home insurance.
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Manchester-based peer-to-peer lender Assetz Capital has promoted both John Hewitt and Mark Standley to regional directors as the firm looks to boost its recruitment efforts in the UK regions.
Hewitt, who previously worked at Bank of Scotland for 25 years, specialising in sales and service, heads up the Scotland, North East, Northern Ireland and Isle of Man territories.
Having been at Assetz for nearly two years, he manages a team of eight located across the regions from the firm’s Edinburgh office, and has been heavily involved in the finance and re-finance of renewable energy projects.
Standley works remotely in the South, leading a team of relationship directors with business responsibility for London, Southern England, South Wales and the South West. Previous roles include branch manager for Handelsbanken in Cardiff/Bridgend, as well as business development director for Barclays Corporate Banking.
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Manchester chartered surveyor and property management company Roger Hannah & Co has welcomed Matthew McCaul on his return from working in Germany for nine years.
During this time he worked for Deka Immobilien, Jones Lang LaSalle and CBRE advising clients and investors across Europe.
Jonathan Harrison, director at Roger Hannah & Co said, “We are always striving to invest in our clients by our improving the quality of service.
“In line with this strategy we are delighted with the appointment of Mathew to the valuation team. Matthew is an experienced Valuer who whilst working in Germany has managed the delivery of large intercontinental valuation instructions. He will certainly be an asset to our team and our Clients.”
McCaul added, “I am thoroughly looking forward to helping drive the business forward and further expand the department in the coming years whilst maintaining excellent relationships with existing clients, which Roger Hannah is renowned for.”
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Manchester-based online parking reservation leader, ParkCloud, has welcomed three new members to its head office team following a successful period of growth.
Elvan Bagci, Melanie Schroeder and Julio Calvo join the parking reservation provider’s team as marketing analyst, account manager – German & Polish and account manager – Spanish respectively, to develop client relationships and work collectively to support the company’s future growth strategy.
Mark Pegler, managing director at ParkCloud, said: “As a dynamic, fast-paced technology business, it’s imperative that we’re continuously investing in the infrastructure of our team, bolstering the breadth of experience and skills in order to respond to an ever-changing market.
“Elvan, Melanie and Julio were all stand-out candidates with strong collective experience and we’re positive that they’ll integrate well within our team as we look to push forward with our growth strategy in 2018.”
This latest recruitment drive follows ParkCloud’s relocation to Manchester city centre from Stockport in 2017.
