Our back story
pH Innovate is a fintech company operating from its headquarters in South Wales and was started in 2016 by two entrepreneurs with a background in financial technology – Stephen Peck and David Harlow. Stephen is Managing Director (Tech Investments) and leads on pH Innovate (fintech) whereas David is Managing Director (Insurance Investments) and leads on pH Innovate (broking).
Stephen Peck
Co-founder
Stephen’s early experience was based on designing and implementing supply chain and demand creation systems across Europe and the Asia Pacific in a mixture of retail, service and distribution sectors.
With the increasing adoption of the internet for business use, Stephen switched to developing online solutions for his customers producing a series of quick to implement hosted services supporting a range of business processes.
As an early adopter of cloud-based systems, Stephen (with David) founded and later sold Quote Exchange which provided SaaS price comparison and lead management services to the UK personal lines insurance market.
Stephen holds an MSc in Informations Systems in addition to a BSc (Hons) in Management and was recently awarded CEng by the British Computer Society.
David Harlow
Co-founder
David started his career at Aviva where he gained his ACII certification whilst working as a trainer on a nationwide IT project. He subsequently moved to broking before starting Insureyourmotor.com in 2000.
David started InsureYourMotor.com with a staff of four above a shop in a West London suburb, over the next thirteen years he grew the business to a staff of 130 and a GWP of circa £50M. Along the way, the business moved to Wales with the help of some grant assistance from the Welsh Assembly government. The business was sold to private equity in 2012
David and Stephen started Quote Exchange in 2005 in response to the changing consumer tastes for price comparison within the personal lines sector. The company grew rapidly and secured contracts with brands including Lloyds Bank, ComparetheMarket and Moneysupermarket. David and Stephen also moved into international markets and launched the first price comparison site in Brazil. This business was sold to a listed company in 2011.
Whilst waiting out his legal and contractual obligations David spent four years in public service as an elected County Councillor on Herefordshire Council. He was made Cabinet Member for Economy and Corporate services and until recently attended the board of the LEP and NMITE – the new university as well as being a Director of the local enterprise Zone.
Four years was enough to convince David that his interests lay more in business and in 2016 he set up pH Innovate companies with Stephen.
Press Releases, Latest News, Updates
GROWTH ON THE AGENDA FOR ENTREPRENEURIAL DUO
The entrepreneurs behind a group of insurance and technology businesses based near Pontypool have told Insider about their successes to date and the growth ambitions they have for their current ventures. David Harlow and Stephen Peck own PH Innovate, which is behind a group that includes Quote Detective, Quotethemarket and Next Venture [...]
Insurance business serves an ace at tennis tournament
INSURANCE firm Three Castle Cover hope it’s game, set and match in terms of its business development after launching its new cover at the largest tennis tournament in the UK. Three Castles Cover was main sponsor of the 99-year-old Hunstanton Lawn Tennis Tournament, which was staged between August 18 [...]
Jobs boost at innovative insurtech firm after strong business growth
WELSH insurtech incubator pH Innovate continues to expand its technical and marketing teams after winning new customers for its innovative insurance trading platform. Success in winning new contracts, including one with an app offering an unique reverse auction insurance product, is leading to jobs growth at the Torfaen business. The [...]
Case studies
Experian partners with Quotethemarket.com as its new API provider
Leading data company website Experian, has chosen Quotethemarket.com to assist developing a competitive panel of car insurance providers who will appear on their newly launched private car price comparison service. Quotethemarket.com provides an outsourced panel development service allowing competitive panels of insurance providers to [...]
Fintech innovator select comparison specialists to power new insurance concept
honcho is the UK’s first reverse auction marketplace for financial services, and they’re offering customers a new way to buy insurance. They were selected for the prestigious Tech Nation Fintech programme 2019 and have raised almost £900k through Crowdcube. Set up as an alternative [...]
Underwriting by machine – case study
PH Innovate customers have realised that to compete they have to be ahead of their competition, Insurance has become more dependent on sophisticated algorithms, relying on new data sources (eg data verification), in order to compete. Risk selection is more individualised, with products becoming available [...]