A self-professed market- ing genius, Peter Wood has pioneered groundbreaking methods of selling insurance, founding telephone-based Direct Line in 1985 and, more recently, utilising the internet to bolster esure, of which he is the current chairman and chief executive, writes Damien Henderson.
Wood is the brains behind the "calm down dear" adverts featuring Michael Winner and the Sheilas' Wheels brands, both of which have contributed to esure expanding amid a gloomy economic outlook elsewhere.
Following an early career in IT with a number of global companies, Wood founded Direct Line Insurance in the UK and built it up to become the country's largest private motor insurer and one of the country's leading direct financial services brands.
It was the first company to use the telephone as a primary selling method and is credited with changing the shape of marketing and customer service in the UK financial services industry.
The huge success of Direct Line, owned by Royal Bank of Scotland, made Wood Britain's highest-paid company director for three years running in the 1990s.
During the 1990s, Wood served as a director of Bankinter in Spain and also founded four other insurance companies around the world including Linea Directa Aseguradora, a company serving the Spanish direct insurance market, and Privilege Insurance, a second joint venture with Royal Bank. In 1994, he also became a director of Plymouth Rock, a privately-owned property and casualty insurance holding company, incorporated in Massachusetts, USA.
Outside insurance, Wood owns two high-profile UK restaurants. His business partner is the UK television celebrity chef Tony Tobin. He is also the largest private investor in the model railway and car brand, Hornby Scalextric.
He was awarded CBE in 1996 in recognition of his contribution to the UK financial services industry.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article