Paula Griffiths had a university plan and a summer job. The summer job proved rather persistent. After her A-levels, she went to work at Norwich Union, enjoyed it, and received an offer of a full-time position with a promotion. She deferred university. Years later, the consequences of that decision include a chief executive’s job at Marshmallow Insurance Ltd in Gibraltar.
There is something pleasantly awkward about this beginning. The familiar executive biography likes to suggest that every step was foreseen, preferably before breakfast on the first day. Griffiths’s account leaves room for a change of direction. A planned Business and Finance degree gave way to work, then professional insurance study. She qualified as a chartered insurer at 25. The interest in finance remained; the route into it changed.
A summer offer, a different route
Her career subsequently crossed several parts of insurance. The published sequence includes commercial broking at Callaghan Insurance Brokers, a managing director role at Peninsula Underwriting, underwriting leadership at Ibex, and a directorship at Apex Insurance International. These were positions in which the business of insurance involved customers, intermediaries and the decisions behind accepting a risk.
That sequence gives the later Marshmallow appointment some texture. Before digital insurance entered her job description, she had worked in organisations dealing with the familiar questions of coverage and distribution. Her career moved through businesses in Gibraltar and roles connected with the UK market. The geography would become especially relevant when Marshmallow established its own Gibraltar insurer.
By 2015, she was managing director of Pukka Insure, a role she held from the managing general agent’s launch. Four years later, her next appointment would bring a wider commercial remit. The progression was through an operating business: products to distribute, relationships to maintain and responsibilities that extended beyond one technical specialism.
Pukka Insure
Freedom Services Group
Marshmallow
Marshmallow Insurance Ltd
A closer look at the driver
One Pukka announcement supplies a useful example of the work. In August 2018, the company joined SSP’s commercial vehicle panel, giving brokers access to its van insurance offering. The cover could accommodate modifications such as signwriting and internal racking. These details sound modest until one remembers that a working van is often an office, a storeroom and a moving advertisement, all parked in the same space.
The underwriting approach also considered drivers with previous claims or convictions. SSP described Pukka’s willingness to look at people who had taken positive action to improve their risk profile. Griffiths welcomed the partnership as a way to extend the company’s commercial vehicle reach. Distribution and individual assessment appeared together in the same announcement.
It offers a concrete glimpse of her managing director years. The product had a defined audience, the partnership supplied a route to brokers, and the underwriting process looked more closely at driving history. The announcement concerned the practical machinery of selling insurance: who could obtain cover, how an intermediary could offer it and which circumstances the product could accommodate.
The kettle and the promotion
In September 2019, Griffiths published an essay called Smart Working. She recalled once believing that presence in the office helped secure recognition. Parenthood changed her view. Flexible hours and location allowed her to organise professional duties alongside family occasions. The examples included a rugby match, a Christmas play and a birthday party. At home, she could put the kettle on and begin work without a commute.
“I strongly believe it’s a win win.”Paula Griffiths, Smart Working, 2019
The essay included a professional development: her promotion from Pukka’s managing director to chief commercial officer at Freedom Group. She credited Sam White and the executive team for facilitating the arrangements. Meetings and client visits still happened. Her account was an argument for organising work around its requirements and recruiting the right person without allowing location to determine the choice.
The appointment announced that November reported directly to Freedom Services Group founder and CEO Sam White. Her remit covered the commercial business as well as marketing, communication, branding and corporate social responsibility. James Blake took over as Pukka’s managing director. Griffiths was moving from the leadership of one operation into responsibilities across a group.
Read beside the appointment, her essay becomes a particularly useful piece of career writing. A working arrangement appears alongside a change in seniority. The kettle is memorable because executive careers seldom leave room for kettles. Yet a career happens during ordinary days, and the organisation of those days determines which meetings, tasks and family occasions can coexist.
An insurer on the Rock
Griffiths joined Marshmallow in 2020. That December, Gibraltar welcomed the business as its newest insurance company after authorisation from the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission. The announcement placed Marshmallow within a jurisdiction already serving insurance businesses and attracting technology companies entering the sector. For Griffiths, Gibraltar was also the location of much of her previous professional life.
The company’s decision to establish an insurer there brought a new organisational setting to her insurance experience. Oliver Kent-Braham, Marshmallow’s co-founder and CEO, described Gibraltar as a location that supported its expansion strategy. The government’s announcement emphasised the arrival of a UK insurtech operating its own insurance company. Behind that description sat the task of running an authorised insurer.
The distinction matters to the shape of her career. Marshmallow is a consumer brand, while Marshmallow Insurance Ltd is the insurer she now leads. A brand may be encountered through a website or app; an insurance company carries a set of operational and governance responsibilities. Griffiths’s current title belongs to that specific company, and her earlier work helps explain the professional route into it.
Three responsibilities, one career
At Marshmallow, her insurance director responsibilities included claims, underwriting and reinsurance strategy and placement. In a 2021 interview, she described technology as a way to respond to customers who wanted to purchase insurance online and make claims quickly. Her interest was in what data and models could do for service, including more complicated customer segments.
“What technology can actually do really amazes me.”Paula Griffiths, 2021
Her public writing also addressed who gets to lead the industry. In March 2022, she contributed an Insurance Day opinion article about technology and a more balanced insurance workforce. The published introduction connected a diverse workforce with progress in the sector. It continued a theme she had discussed in her earlier interview: representation among leaders and the value of different perspectives.
By 2024, she was a guest on David Scott’s The Diary of a Claims Handler. The account accompanying the episode described her professional qualification, experience across underwriting and business development, and mentoring within Marshmallow and the wider insurance community. It also highlighted planning, communication and engagement within teams. Those are useful additions to a biography otherwise dominated by appointments.
The episode’s introduction returned to her start as an accounts clerk at the business now known as Aviva. It described professional study followed by leadership of a Lloyd’s coverholder. Taken with the subsequent roles, the trajectory shows repeated movement between technical work and the management of people. There are several ways to acquire an insurance education; hers included the business itself.
A seat at the claims table
In July 2025, I Love Claims named Griffiths to its Motor Claims Advisory Board. Her title at that point was VP - Insurance & Partnerships at Marshmallow. The group included executives from Sabre, Howden, Allianz, Aviva, Ageas, esure, Tesco Insurance and Money Services, and Aioi Nissay Dowa Europe. Its purpose was to help shape the organisation’s motor claims initiatives.
In September 2026, she joined ILC founder Chris Ashworth for the closing fireside chat at the Exclusive Motor Claims Conference. Held at Think Tank, 8 Bishopsgate in London, the event brought together insurance claims leaders for discussions ranging from vehicle repair and legal services to artificial intelligence and mobility. Her conversation covered leadership, technology, digital adoption, regulation and insurance’s future development.
The setting placed her alongside the wider claims industry rather than solely within her own company. The programme had opened with the launch of Ian Hughes’s book about claims experiences and customer retention, and included a discussion with Aviva claims leaders. Griffiths’s closing conversation fitted into a day concerned with how insurance operates after the policy has been sold.
The December succession
Marshmallow Insurance Ltd’s FY25 report records that Griffiths succeeded David Coughlan as CEO in December 2025. Her public announcement followed with a cheerful reference to a new year and a new role. It was a promotion within a company where she had already worked in insurance leadership for several years.
CEO responsibilities are set within the company’s governance arrangements. Its board delegates operational responsibilities to the chief executive, who assigns objectives and responsibilities to executive directors and managers. Certain decisions require board approval, including new underwritten products. The appointment therefore places Griffiths within an established framework of authority and accountability.
Her story ends, for now, with that responsibility and a continuing place in industry conversations. It began with a summer employer making an offer persuasive enough to interrupt a university plan. In between came professional study, underwriting, commercial leadership and an essay about making a working day fit. The summer job kept going. So did the willingness to reconsider the plan.