Barry Panayi, group chief data officer (CDO) at insurance firm Howden, is on a mission to create what he calls the datasphere. Rather than simply collecting data, he wants information and insight to become integral to joined-up business operations.
“Our work is not about producing a list of tables with numbers in rows and columns,” he says. “Yes, that effort is important, but it’s not the stuff that will set us apart. If you can get the information first – such as what’s happening in the supply chain or a technological advancement that’s affecting the business – we must factor that insight into the rows and columns of numbers. That’s the key business transformation for us.”
Panayi’s attempt to build the datasphere at Howden began in August 2025. He joined the firm after working for retailer John Lewis Partnership (JLP) for four-and-a-half years, where, as he explained to Computer Weekly in December 2022, his team oversaw data management, business intelligence, and research and insight.
Having previously worked in financial services as data chief at both Lloyds and Amlin, Panayi says the opportunity at Howden provided the chance to return to an industry he knew well, but with a different slant.
“I wanted to work for more of an upstart,” he says. “Howden felt right, because it had the scale – it was big, it was winning – but it wasn’t weighed down like one of the bigger incumbents.”
Panayi describes his new employer as a “hyper-growth company”. The firm employs about 23,000 people, having grown from around 10,000 employees five years ago. The use of data and technology is right at the centre of the company’s growth agenda. While Panayi enjoyed working for JLP, he was attracted by the ambition and energy he found at Howden.
“It’s just dynamic,” he says. “It’s a private and owner-led business. CEO David Howden owns the company. He’s enormously charismatic, and the organisation felt energetic. I thought I’d give the opportunity a go, and it’s been great.”
Leading change
Panayi looks back on his time at JLP and says his team’s biggest achievement there was ensuring the right insight and information were being pushed to people in shops and operational locations.
“We did all the cool stuff, like getting the platform and tools up and running, and maturing our capability. However, the thing that made the difference was, for the first time, people in our shops weren’t looking at printouts on pinboards. They had apps on their handsets that told them the location of a delivery or product, or pricing information,” he says.
“We did all these concepts, and they all took off and became industrialised. We did some cool AI stuff, but we made people’s lives better in the shops. We were able to get information to the people who actually use it. This insight meant there was more stuff on the shelf for people to buy, priced at the right price. And that’s what retail is about, buying something and selling it for more than you bought it for.”
“We want to get people using data, but not in a way that we build a massive central team. We want to do it a different way. That different approach comes with challenges, because entrepreneurialism means moving quickly, and sometimes things happen that you’re not aware of. But that all makes for a fun vibe”
Barry Panayi, Howden
Panayi recognises that leading data at Howden means working across a different type of organisation.
“We are so federated and entrepreneurial. That is David’s ethos – you get out of people’s way. We’ve grown through acquisition, so we don’t want to snatch everything into the middle. It’s a different challenge from JLP, because we want to get people using data, but not in a way that we build a massive central team,” he says.
“We want to do it a different way, which is quite rare, because big enterprises want to suffocate things. That different approach comes with challenges, of course, because entrepreneurialism means moving quickly, and sometimes things happen that you’re not aware of. But that all makes for a fun vibe.”
Panayi says Howden broke into the global top 10 insurers for the first time in 2025, and the senior executives at the firm can see a potential route to the top four. He gives an example of the rate of growth. Having started from zero in the US, the company employed 300 people before Christmas as it began its operation and added another 200 during the holiday period.
“When I joined, in my second week, I was told to go and help them set up the US business, from a data point of view,” he says. “So, we really are moving quickly.”
Developing products
As global CDO, Panayi manages data across 50 countries. The broad nature of the business also impacts his role. “We’re a broker, but also an underwriter and a reinsurer,” he says. “Because we do different things, it means the data also does different things.”
Panayi is responsible for the technical platform and engineering, as well as the data management and architecture around the insight the firm creates. He also oversees analytics, data science and machine learning, and has an internal transformation office with technical business analysts that can help drive pioneering projects.
“The data is everywhere, not because it’s poorly organised, but because there’s such a variety of information that our brokers need to have conversations with their clients. From a data point of view, the work involves more than identifying the data sources and ingesting them into a platform,” he says.
“It’s a lot more nuanced than that, and you could waste a lot of time trying to get everything into shape, when really what we need to do is help our brokers get the information they want, and that they didn’t know they wanted. And the way to serve that insight isn’t in a report in Power BI or Tableau. That just isn’t going to work.”
Instead, Panayi wants his team to help the business build dedicated products for the customers it serves.
“If you’re building a datacentre under the sea or in the desert or on a farm, insurance is different,” he says. “And if you’re insuring a restaurant, even if it’s the same cuisine and the same floor space, it matters where it is in the street, city and country. So, there’s a bit of an art involved in this work.”
Building the datasphere
Panayi says the business will continue to grow, which creates human resource demands. While technically capable staff are important, the key professionals for the data team are those who understand a wide breadth of operational activities.
“All these different lines of business have different questions,” he says. “I need people who are partnering with the business. I’ve never been in a position before as a CDO where I’m trying to employ those business translators almost as much as the technical people.”
Panayi explains what that focus means for the data products his team creates. He suggests the aim is to develop data-powered conversational interfaces that help employees make insight-led decisions.
“Our brokers need someone on their shoulder all the time,” he says. “They need technology that tells them the stuff they want to know immediately. For example, say they’ve just come out of a meeting, they need to speak to their AI on their phone to capture what’s happened, and the AI to say, ‘Oh, remember this element is coming up for renewal. You should speak with your colleague.’”
By sharing knowledge via emerging technology, Panayi says the company’s datasphere can bring together employees in disparate places. “Connecting people is another thing that data can do,” he says. “There’s a huge opportunity, as we grow and get a more varied business, for people to help our clients by referring them to other bits of Howden. We haven’t grown up together. We’ve grown up in different firms.”
Panayi returns to the example of datacentre insurance, where each part of the building process – construction, supply chain, fire and employee benefits – involves different elements of the insurance business. By sharing knowledge, colleagues can understand new opportunities. “We can do all that work, and the data is helping people at Howden to understand our cross-organisational relationships,” he says.
Spreading insight
Panayi wants these initiatives to be implemented during the next 24 months. Two years from now, he expects Howden employees to benefit from a mature data approach that’s unlike any other insurance business.
I would like one of our clients to stand on stage at an internal leadership event and say that the information and insight they get from their conversations with our brokers is unlike anywhere else. And I’d like brokers to say that this capability exists because they have power from everyone else’s data Barry Panayi, Howden
“Whatever question you have, there will be a bit of information or data or insight available to you quickly that helps you make a quicker or better or deeper decision. That will not be by chance – it’ll be by design that we have connected globally, the people who are talking to our clients,” he says.
The company’s datasets are held in Microsoft Azure, while the data platform is Databricks. Panayi says it plans to use as many native Databricks capabilities as possible, including Genie, a conversational interface on the platform that allows business teams to interact with data using natural language.
The aim is to create a simple platform for Howden to run complex data projects. The acquisitive nature of the firm means it’s crucial that technology can be used to help spread information and insight to internal employees across the organisation. He paints a picture of the technology-enabled, data-sharing business 24 months from now.
“What I would like is for one of our clients to stand on stage at an internal leadership event and say that the information and insight they get from their conversations with our brokers is unlike anywhere else. And I’d like brokers to say that this capability exists because they have power from everyone else’s data,” he says.
“No broker will be on their own talking to a client because they can tap into all our knowledge straightaway. I care about brokers and underwriters having superpowers. Ours are already the best in the market, but we’re going to make them brilliant – and our clients will tell us that. That’s what I want to happen.”
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