British Friendly appoints Iain Clark as CEO

Clarke joined British Friendly in September 2015 from LV=, where he served as managing director for protection.

British Friendly’s distribution and marketing director Iain Clark will take over as chief executive when current CEO Mark Myers steps down next year.

Clarke joined British Friendly in September 2015 from LV=, where he served as managing director for protection.

Previously he held sales director roles at both Legal & General and PruProtect.

The transition is expected in Spring 2017.

Clark said: “The British Friendly ethos is centred around serving our members and making sure their best interests are a core part of everything we do from application to claim stage.

“A central part of that is creating products and services that make it as easy as possible for advisers to highlight the importance of income protection with their clients.

“It is such a pleasure to work for a company with these principles and why I am so pleased to be able to accept the role of CEO at British Friendly.

“Mark Myers has been a great leader and I’m looking forward to building on all the invaluable work he has put in over the years.”

Chris Radford, chairman at British Friendly, said: “Iain has brought a huge amount of energy and experience to British Friendly since he arrived last year and we have gone from strength to strength by innovating and showing strong sales growth.

“Iain is well placed to take over from Mark Myers and take us forward. Mark has been an excellent CEO and his time here has been very successful for us. Everyone at British Friendly wishes him the very best for the future.”

So far this year British Friendly has released a decade of claims paid statistics, rebranded, introduced death benefit and care assistance benefit, added more deferred periods on their short-term IP cover and improved auto acceptance system that allows advisers to receive immediate acceptance when their clients apply for income protection online.