David Howden is regarded by many as the insurance world’s answer to Richard Branson. His dynamism has shaped Howden, the insurance company he helped found 30 years ago, into the empire it is today. However, it’s not the likes of Necker Island and taking to the skies that occupy him but somewhere more grounded: his family and the countryside along with all it has to offer, including food, farming and fieldsports.

Tall, charismatic and floppy-haired, he moves with the fast-forward action of someone embracing life at twice the pace of the rest of us. Given his eye-poppingly busy schedule that, like insurance, covers many aspects of life, from horses and houses through to the hedgeland and humans, he needs to be. Howden is up with the sparrows to get to the City, preferably having already had a swim in the lake where he also fishes, before most of us have emerged from our beds. With offices in 55 countries as well as 100 high-street premises in the UK – “We’ve more branches than some banks” – he also travels widely.

Taught how to shoot and fish

Howden’s interests and financial acumen were triggered at seven years old when his father died. Funds immediately became tight and the family relocated from the south to a small village in the Yorkshire Dales. “There was a wonderful old guy called Seb Sadler, who lived opposite and took me under his wing,” Howden says, recalling how he gave him that first instinct for making money. “He taught me how to shoot and fish, and also paid me five pence to pluck a grouse.”

His mother bought him his first gun, a 28-bore, but at 14 he bought himself his first 12-bore. “I’ve still got it,” says Howden, who maintains a small, friendly shoot at his home, Cornbury Park in Oxfordshire, where he lives with his equally charismatic wife Fiona and their three daughters. “Everyone walks everywhere, rather than being driven, and there’s a limit of no more than 100 to 150 birds. I don’t believe in big days: we eat everything that we shoot,” he explains.

David Howden sees fishing as more “therapeutic” and credits this lasting passion to a former business partner, Richard Elias, who used to “take me up to the Suisgill estate on the Helmsdale in Scotland when he was alive. I caught my first salmon there with him. I was so excited that I ripped off the midge net I was wearing and ended up looking like something from a horror movie because I was so badly bitten.

“Richard also took me to a beat on the Helmsdale known as ‘Spiders’, as you need legs like a spider to climb over the rocks to get to it,” he recalls. “He enjoyed taking me there and would sit, gin and tonic in hand, watching to see how long it would be before I fell into the river.”

Food and farming

His interest in food and farming took root, literally, when he and Fiona moved out of London in 1990. “We hardly had any money. We began with chickens and then went on to pigs. I did a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall course and started producing my own salamis and hams,” he reveals. It’s become a Howden tradition that senior executives still receive one of his hams at Christmas. After pigs came prize-winning Longhorn cattle, and then he bought The Pointer in Brill, which won Michelin Pub of the Year in 2018. “At one stage there were 200 ingredients produced by us going to the pub, including vegetables.”

The couple sold The Pointer when they moved to Cornbury in 2019 so they could “expand our farming and be close to our daughters’ schools”. Here, Howden is “proving that you can farm in a way that is good for the environment and decarbonise by creating proper biodiversity”. When they first moved in, a horse-mad colleague encouraged Howden to re-establish the Cornbury House Horse Trials, which he did “during COVID-19. Everyone thought I was mad.” However, it’s become the highlight of not just the equine but the social calendar, with the glamorous Chipping Norton set and Royals mingling freely with riders, sponsors and punters. Howden also personally supports British Eventing via a project he created called The Howden Way to make the sport more accessible to all, no matter their background.

Wilderness Festival

Other events that come under his radar include the Wilderness Festival, which is held “in my back garden”, and rugby, a game he played until he broke his back at 16 and that Howden now supports through the sponsorship of the British & Irish Lions. There is also Ascot Racecourse, of which Howden is an official partner, reflecting his love of horses. He owns several racehorses and, to his jubilation, his filly Running Lion took the Duke of Cambridge Stakes at Royal Ascot this year.

Howden also rides, having taken up the reins again aged 50 in order to keep up with and engage with his daughters. “However, I don’t bounce the way I used to,” he recognises, admitting that his delightful 17hh hunter Brian, pictured here, is “too strong for me these days”. Instead, his eventing daughter Jemima has the ride for the most part. When our interview ends, I’m left with the feeling that the man may not be presently as instantly recognisable as Richard Branson but, given all of Howden’s activities in business and in his support of the countryside, he soon will be.

Styling by Talitha Howden