Eye on Insurance
New Team, New Ambition... Brian McDowell & Hughes Insurance
The past couple of summers have seen plenty of change at the Newtownards headquarters of Hughes Insurance.
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ack in 2014, it was announced that the familyowned company led by the man who gave it its name, Leslie Hughes, was to be acquired by US-based insurance industry giants Liberty Mutual. Last summer, the acquisition was completed. This summer, a brand new executive
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team is bedded in and the firm has ambitious plans for the future. Those plans include a concerted three-pronged assault on the motor, home and commercial insurance marketplace here in Northern Ireland, and the advancement of plans to assess moving into the GB market and launching health and
life assurance for customers in NI. The new Chief Executive at Hughes Insurance is Brian McDowell, a former senior banker who switched career from banking to insurance seven years ago to become Sales & Marketing Director at Hughes. A University of Ulster graduate, he started his financial career with Alliance & Leicester, latterly Santander before going on to manage the large-scale Halifax/ Bank of Scotland sales centre in Belfast Gasworks and then joining
Bank of Ireland where he headed up BoI’s retail bank sales lines. “I met Gareth Brady (Hughes’ former CEO, now Chairman) on a couple of occasions in my Bank of Ireland days” says Brian. “And I suppose my move from banking to insurance came out of those early meetings. I was inspired by the vision that Gareth clearly demonstrated for the Hughes business.” He’s passionate about how Hughes Insurance has changed and how it will continue to grow. “We’ve