Our people

Stephen McGee

CEO

Stephen McGee first joined Scottish Friendly in September 2021 as a non-Executive Director, before taking on the role of CEO in April 2022.

Stephen has spent his whole career in UK financial services working for Santander, Phoenix, Lloyds Banking Group and Aegon. Stephen has a wide range of experience in finance, actuarial, commercial and strategic roles.

 
Stephen’s ambition is to create a world class working environment, one which is open, inclusive, collegiate and productive. One where we serve our purpose to help our customers and their families to achieve financial wellbeing through friendly products and customer care, we can fulfil our initial potential and achieve our collective ambition to be the UK’s leading mutual insurer.

Stephen is an advocate for inclusion and diversity and supports a number of local charitable initiatives who operate in this space. Stephen spends most of his time outside of work with his wife and son, with all three passionate football and movie fans. Stephen uses his passion for football by helping others to run a youth football club in East Kilbride (EKRR)..

Alan Rankine

Chief Actuary and CFO Designate

Alan Rankine first joined Scottish Friendly as Chief Actuary in July 2018 before being appointed as Chief Financial Officer in October 2022. 
 
Alan oversees the finance and investment teams and is responsible for shaping and evolving Scottish Friendly’s corporate strategy and culture.
 
Alan studied at the University of Edinburgh from 2003 until 2007 and is a qualified actuary with over 15 years’ experience in the life insurance industry. He has worked in both consultancy and industry, with experience working at senior levels with a number of companies within the industry.

Alexander Manas

Commercial Director

Alexander Manas joined Scottish Friendly in November 2022 as Commercial Director after leaving his position as Strategy Director at EY-Parthenon. 

Alexander has almost 20 years’ experience working in senior strategy, corporate development, and portfolio management roles in the UK and Belgium. In his previous consulting and industry roles he has been instrumental in driving growth and change. 

Alexander has extensive experience advising Board and Executive members across the Life & Pensions, Insurance, and Wealth and Asset Management Sectors, working across both Mutual and Corporate businesses. 

As Commercial Director, Alexander is responsible for leading and overseeing the Marketing, Partnership and Product functions. This includes managing the strategic plans across partners and re-insurers to maximise sales and profit as well as collaborating to design and deliver new product opportunities.

Jill MacKay

Head of Marketing

Jill Mackay first joined Scottish Friendly in 2006 and has moved through the ranks within the Marketing team during her career. She was the driving force in transforming Scottish Friendly into a digital first own brand marketing operation. She has been key to supporting change, product innovation and digital service development, whilst delivering strong commercial own brand sales growth via integrated marketing. She was appointed Head of Marketing in April 2017.

With over 20 years of experience in marketing and communications, as well as driving growth and change for insurance and financial services providers, she is primarily responsible for furthering the brand and reputation of Scottish Friendly, through strategic marketing, communications and enhanced digital experiences, as well as leading the charge on Scottish Friendly’s sustainability objectives, market research and continuing to support transformational change.

Jill completed her studies at Glasgow Caledonian University from 1997 until 2001, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts, First Class Honours degree, in Marketing and Communications and was recognised by the University and Direct Marketing Association in 2001 with two prestigious awards for academic achievement.

Aileen Abernethy

Head of Operational Control and Conduct Risk

Aileen Abernethy has worked at Scottish Friendly for over 23 years since March 1999 when she took on the role of Compliance Officer. Aileen was appointed as Head of Operational Control and Conduct Risk In January 2023, transitioning from her role as Head of Customer Experience.

The customer experience team is a relatively new team within the organisation, having been created in November 2021, and was designed to help demonstrate Scottish Friendly’s commitment to customer value.

In her most recent role, Aileen is now responsible for moving our business forward, improving customer outcomes, addressing conduct risk, and managing key projects. She will play a key role in ensuring that our customers remain at the heart of everything we do, and we are consistently doing the right thing by them as well as listening and learning from them.

Gen Humphreys

Chief Risk Officer 

Gen Humphreys joined Scottish Friendly in 2019 as Chief Risk Officer after leaving her Director role of over 17 years at PwC.

Gen leads a second-line team which spends a lot of time engaging with the business as a whole and working alongside every function within the organisation. 

Gen is responsible for supporting the success of Scottish Friendly, particularly in regard to financial and operational resilience, to ensure we can continue to act in a safe and controlled manner. For Gen’s team, it is vital that they ensure Scottish Friendly is operating in a way which delivers the right things for our colleagues, customers, and the wider community.

The vision for Gen’s function is to provide insightful and effective oversight of Scottish Friendly and to maintain a forward-looking view in order to mitigate risk to the business. Although challenging at times, particularly due to unprecedented external challenges such as the Covid-19 pandemic, this demonstrates the importance of Risk and Compliance. 

Pam Simmons

HR Director and Company Secretary

Pam Simmons joined Scottish Friendly in March 2020 and currently holds the position of both HR Director and Company Secretary. Pam has over 30 years’ domestic and international experience across all HR disciplines as well as broader programme, general management and customer service experience. She has worked across the Retail, Financial Services, the Arts as well as Private Equity leading small and large teams.

Pam has had a variety of senior roles at a number of organisations such as B&Q,  RBS, IVLA and Scottish Ballet. She has been involved in a number of start-up roles and launch of new initiatives and delivered multi-million-pound cost saving programmes. During her maternity leave she also founded an e-commerce business that traded for a number of years until she returned back to full time Executive employment. 

Pam is responsible for helping Scottish Friendly be a great place to work, delivering this through her highly engaged and committed team as well as through our colleagues.  She loves working at Scottish Friendly because of the people and the culture, is proud to work for a firm that has been here for over 160 years and her ambition is to help build it for the next 160 years. 

Scott McNeil

Chief Actuary