Chris Ward

I'm a commercially driven Marketing Director with 20+ years of success delivering growth, transformation and market leadership for global insurance and financial services brands. Combines strategic vision with deep expertise in brand, digital, and data-led marketing to unlock new revenue streams, scale customer engagement, and drive measurable business outcomes across complex, regulated environments. Excellent leader and coach aligning people strategy to business objectives and driving team engagement fostering a culture of commerciality, creativity and collaboration

• A strategic direct and digital marketing SME across all channels in the customer journey, including research and insight, profiling and analysis, advertising, email, SEO, PPC, social and programmatic, with the ability to drive audience engagement
• Adopts an analytical approach to measuring attribution in acquisition and retention, leveraging data, insights, propensity modelling and segmentation to improve targeting and planning, from creative development to campaign execution and from evaluation to revenue growth
• Adept at identifying new business opportunities, influencing stakeholders and developing partnerships that deliver new revenue streams

In Commercial Insurance I drove the strategic review of QBE marketing in Europe to deliver a five year strategy and plan for growth. Led the strategic transformation of marketing, brand and growth agenda in the UK, Europe and Asia through award winning integrated campaigns across thought leadership, content, PR, events, research, insight and digital channels that built brand presence, awareness and audience engagement, while driving growth with measurable success in all channels. Led the direction, delivery and growth of QBE Europe’s marketing strategy in core B2B markets, covering SME, mid and large corporates, in commercial insurance and reinsurance across the UK, Europe and Asia.

Collaborated with business leaders to align marketing with business objectives. Grew and managed the marketing team of 20 in brand, events, hospitality, web development, CRM, insight, analysis and product marketing. Spearheaded the development of the company’s brand positioning and messaging for global consistency.

Managed and optimised QBE’s presence at events including BIBA, AIRMIC, FERMA and AMRAE

• Improved marketing effectiveness by a factor of 30, securing a 300% increase in marketing budget and doubling unprompted brand awareness with cross-functional alignment for pipeline acceleration
• Instrumental in the company becoming the leading industry content provider in category by creating and executing detailed campaign plans across digital and traditional media including advertising, SEO, PPC, retargeting, social media and Salesforce marketing cloud 
• Drove cross sell, increased the average product holding and developed a whole account view across different product lines through the development of insight-led data strategy and CRM programmes 
• Led the website redevelopment, ensuring 13 websites were optimised for search and user experience following comprehensive audit, competitor and industry best-in-class research
• Managed, developed and executed key market research programmes, including brand health, customer journey, awareness / NPS, risk management, multinational and reinsurance, to inform marketing strategy and proposition development
• Oversaw the bid management process and output, worth £500m, and implemented the Visme bid management platform

I hold an MBA from The University of Leeds Business School, have a B.A. Hons degree in French and Economics and am a Fellow of the Institute of Digital and Direct Marketing.