Profile - Peter Burrows

“The finance market is difficult from both consumers and insurers’ perspectives at the moment,” he says. “Against that backdrop it’s tough times but exciting times.”

Burrows, 43, has been in his current role for just over a year. In November 2010, after seven years at insurance giant Aviva, he decided he needed a new challenge and moved to the Harrogate-based friendly society.

“I’m still as excited now as I was when I joined Engage Mutual,” he says. “Aviva is a very professional organisation with a number of very talented people working there, but the time was right for me to leave.”

He adds: “Engage Mutual is an organisation that has the principals of mutuality and social enterprise instilled into it. Working here you feel you’re working for a business that understands its true purpose but also understands it can’t cling on to what it does and wither and die.”

Burrows describes himself as analytical and optimistic. “We are in the middle of a huge financial crisis. My view is that that’s an opportunity and out of that will emerge the players of the future and I want to be one.”

Engage, which sells savings, investment and life insurance products, manages assets of almost £1bn.

Its key focus for 2012 is growing its healthcare and life insurance divisions. Engage entered the health market in summer 2008 and has seen the current annual premium grow to nearly £7m.

It plans to become one of the top-10 health cash plan providers by the end of this year following the recent acquisition of National Friendly’s sales team and the One Fund health cash plan aimed at the corporate market.

At the start of last year Engage agreed a deal with York-based Benenden Healthcare to deliver and further develop Benenden’s health cash plan. It has since become the service provider and underwriter for more than 15,000 Benenden health cash plans.

It closed sites in Bedford and Gloucester arising from acquisitions, and relocated the 15 jobs to Harrogate. Last year, it created a total of 26 new jobs in the town, taking the total number of staff to almost 200.

“I can see us making a bolder and deeper investment curve over the period 2011-15,” says Burrows. “We will enhance and develop our health product range.

“Life insurance and health insurance are two things we’re really good at. We can hold our head up high with the simplicity, the pricing, the benefits of the products and the service we provide.

“We believe we can provide a range of products that can bridge the gap between the NHS and full private health insurance, which is very expensive.”

In addition, Engage is reducing the number of fund managers it uses from four to three, which it says will save money and simplify its products.

Engage said its capital strength continues to be “very strong” and is made up of funds with no exposure to equities. A large chunk of its surplus is in UK Government bonds, which are regarded as a safe haven for investors.

Burrows says the capital base is running at three times the requirement of regulators.

He attributes Engage’s strong capital position to the prudent management of the business and the acquisitions made last year. “Our objective isn’t to have capital strength for the sake of it, though,” he says.

“The objective is to have the right amount of capital that we can deliver the right service to our customers, the right bedrock of security so we can always be there in the bad times, and that we have enough to invest in developing the business in the future. If we have in excess of that, we look to use it for the benefit of our customers.”

The Government has said it wants to see mutuals change the structure of financial services in Britain. “We’re at pretty early stages of exactly what that means. How, if at all, the Government is able to create a framework that’s favourable to mutuals,” says Burrows. “Whether the mutual sector is able to respond is the $64,000 question.”

He adds: “Mutual insurers are a bit below the radar of the general public. Our challenge is changing that and making a difference through being a mutual.”

Burrows lives in Thirsk with his wife, Lynne, and two daughters, Ximena, eight, and Eulalie, four.

He grew up on the South London/Surrey border with his parents – his father was a printer – and younger sister.

He says he didn’t know what he wanted to be as a teenager. “On paper it all looks very sensible and organised...but I’ve never been one of those people who has a life plan,” he says. “I just did things that interested me and things that I thought I could learn from.”

Burrows studied Maths at Oxford University before training to be a chartered accountant at Ernst & Young in London and Leeds.

“It was a real toss-up as to whether to stay in academia or leave because I’m a little bit of a geek, although I try to keep it below the surface,” he laughs.

“I decided that the real world might do me good and I chose accountancy because I wanted a professional qualification that would stand me in good stead for the next 50 years of work. It also meant that I could keep my options open because I didn’t really know what I wanted to be at that stage.”

Although Burrows didn’t know what he wanted to be professionally, his personal life was a little more straightforward and he married his college sweetheart, Lynne, a week after taking his final exams. “The most important thing I got out of university was my wife,” he says.

After 12 years at Ernst & Young, eventually becoming a senior manager specialising in financial services, Burrows decided to pursue a career in industry rather than consulting and was headhunted by Aviva in York in 2003.

During his time there he moved through a number of different senior finance roles. “It’s probably the only time that I have actively managed my career,” he says. “I was joining a business after 12 years in consulting and lots of other people had lots of industry experience. So I thought I’ve got to do as many different things as I can in a short space of time to prove myself.”

He spent the last two years as finance reporting director at Aviva Europe. “The year ending 2008 was a fun one,” he says. “It’s times like that when you learn the most. The share price of Aviva fell like a stone at one point and you’re in the eye of the storm.

“You can either panic and shout ‘woe is me’ or you can say ‘in five years’ time, I’m going to have learned a hell of a lot and have some good stories to tell people’.”

Peter Burrows Factfile

Title: Finance director of Engage Mutual

Date of birth: September 19, 1968

Education: Maths degree at Oxford University

First job: Paper round aged 11 or 12

Favourite song: Live it out, by Metric

Car driven: Mini

Favourite film: The Empire Strikes Back

Favourite holiday destination: Lake District

Last book read: What Is Your Dangerous Idea? by John Brockman

Most proud of: Random acts of kindness – especially when I see my kids doing them.