Specialist insurance broker, Brightside, has announced that Paul Williams has joined the Board as Chief Executive Officer.

As announced on 28 November 2013, Paul joins Brightside from Towergate Partnership Ltd, Europe's largest independently owned insurance intermediary writing in excess of £2 billion of gross written premiums per annum, where he was a Director on the Retail Executive Committee responsible for all insurer and market relationships across the broking businesses.

Following Paul Williams' arrival, the company remains focused on delivering compelling customer propositions, significant and sustainable growth and shareholder value. His breadth of leadership experience and market knowledge significantly strengthens the Group's ability to achieve these objectives.

On joining Brightside, he said: "Brightside has a history of rapid growth with considerable opportunity for further policy and profit growth without the underwriting risk of an insurer. As a new CEO, it is essential to ensure continuity in the implementation of the Company's growth plan.

"Initially, I will focus on a number of key areas to grow the profitability of the book. These will include; negotiating deals with key insurers, expanding our insurer panel and redefining our insurance capacity through the introduction of Delegated Authority and Managing General Agent agreements to augment the Group's income streams. As well as continued strengthening of our validation techniques, which reduce our insurer partners' exposure to fraud, to allow us to offer more competitive rates to our customers.

"In addition, there are several exciting new partnerships planned for 2014, the first of which, with RatedPeople.com, the UK's largest online trade recommendation service, was announced last week.

"These partnerships are key to developing our distribution and we will continue to concentrate on markets where we have strength and scale, particularly in the motor and SME arenas where we have developed expertise online and through our UK based call centres. Using our Quote Exchange platform we will use our technological advances to introduce additional niche brands to our portfolio."