Howden has appointed Hannah Proctor (pictured) as global benefits management team leader, reporting to Anne Terry, managing director of Howden's Multinational Client Practice. Proctor brings a decade of employee benefits experience, including four years in Singapore with Mercer Marsh Benefits advising clients across the UK, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East.
Terry said Proctor's background was a direct fit for the role. "Hannah has built a strong track record for this role: a decade in employee benefits, four of those years working abroad with multinational clients, and relationships across many countries built on real collaboration," she said. "She has exactly the entrepreneurial, energised approach that fits our culture at Howden."
Proctor said the move gave her the opportunity to bring those relationships to a new platform. "Having lived and worked across different countries, I have built strong relationships with multinational clients and colleagues around the world, and I love the entrepreneurial energy Howden brings to this space," she said. "I am looking forward to bringing that energy to the team."
The appointment lands as Howden continues to build significant scale in multinational employee benefits. Its Evelyn Partners Financial Services acquisition adds 38 professionals once it closes, and combined with its earlier Barnett Waddingham purchase, pushes its benefits and pensions arm to roughly 4,000 people across 40 countries, generating revenue above £500 million. Proctor's appointment reads less like a standalone hire and more like Howden filling a management gap its own growth has created.
That growth has not been without friction. In December 2025, Howden hired approximately 275 staff from Brown & Brown, targeting the legacy Hays Companies benefits operation - a move Brown & Brown's CEO disclosed on an earnings call had cost the firm $23 million in known annual revenue. Brown & Brown has filed suit across multiple jurisdictions, with active litigation ongoing in Massachusetts, Minnesota and elsewhere. Howden and the departing employees have contested Brown & Brown's characterisation in court filings. The litigation is unresolved. The episode nonetheless illustrates what a specialist multinational benefits team is worth when client relationships follow the people who service them - and why firms are competing as aggressively as they are to build and hold this capability.
The competitive intensity around Proctor's appointment reflects a broader market shift. HUB International repositioned its global benefits practice this year, moving from placement toward full advisory for multinational employers, arguing that country-by-country brokers create compliance gaps and duplicated spend that a coordinated model eliminates. MAXIS Global Benefits Network added a business development veteran with more than 20 years at International Group Program to its US team. Marsh launched Marsh Nexus, a captive solution for multinationals managing rising benefits costs across borders, as captive use for international benefits has more than doubled in five years to over $3 billion in combined premium. Generali's acquisition of Swiss Life Network is concentrating global network capacity among fewer, larger players.
For benefits brokers with multinational clients, the consolidation of network capacity and advisory capability among a smaller number of larger firms is the structural pressure that makes appointments like Proctor's worth tracking. Employers with cross-border workforces are increasingly buying from whoever can demonstrate they have solved the coordination problem at scale - not whoever has been the incumbent longest. WTW's decision to create roles spanning both health and benefits and corporate risk simultaneously under its "One WTW" model signals that the competitive set is also widening: a broker still selling benefits as a standalone product is increasingly pitching against a rival selling it as one line inside a unified risk relationship.
Howden's bet is that scale, specialist talent and an international platform - now with Proctor's Asia-Pacific and Middle East network added to it - can compete on all of those dimensions at once.
