Russ Piper: “My retirement is a bit like my career, I haven’t got a definitive plan"

At the age of 16, he left school in Islington, London, where he shared lessons with two members of Spandau Ballet – Gary Kemp and Steve Norman – to work as a clerical assistant at the Department for Environment.

"I never thought I’d ever reach these heady levels,” Piper says, looking around his new office at Sovereign Health Care’s headquarters, adjacent to Salts Mill in Saltaire.

The company moved from a dated office building in Bradford to a converted mill space in November last year after purchasing The Waterfront building for £8m and completing a comprehensive refurbishment.

"The fact that we’ve bought this building is brilliant,” he says. “It gives Sovereign another arm for the future.”

It’s just one of the legacies Piper is proud to leave when he retires next year.

Sovereign Health Care, which was founded in 1873 to provide local workers with healthcare in the days before the NHS, provides health cash plans for customers to help cover the costs of everyday treatment such as dental care, eye tests and physiotherapy.

The company has more than 67,000 customers, and works both with businesses and individual members. According to its annual accounts for the year ended December 2022, premium income was just under £10m and it paid out £7m in claims.

Piper’s aim when he became chief executive in 2009 was to reach 100,000 customers but, he says, the Covid-19 pandemic wiped out five or six years of growth in 12 months.

“Slowly and surely we’re recovering from that,” he says. “The challenge with our type of product is that it’s a discretionary spend. There’s no penalty for lapsing your policy and rejoining.”

The company is seeing a particular rise in company paid schemes. “There’s definitely been a marked interest in the corporate market with companies becoming very aware about the health and wellbeing of their staff,” says Piper

Sovereign Health Care gifts between five and 10 per cent of its turnover to good causes each year, usually about £500,000.

This year, to celebrate the company’s 150th anniversary, he has pledged to donate at least £1.2m to Yorkshire NHS Trusts and local charities.

Piper started to plan his retirement three years ago, deciding to retire at the age of 64, which will be next April.

“I can’t say there’s one definitive reason to pick that date,” he says. "Next year I will have been working for 48 years. I think as I’ve got older, my passion and resilience hasn’t been affected but I think sometimes my patience can be.”

Having lived in North Yorkshire for over 20 years, his roots are firmly up here.

The family home in Harrogate has been extended and adapted to meet the needs of his 29-year-old disabled son, Jack, and he says he has plenty of hobbies to indulge.

Piper, who also has a 27-year-old son, Ben, is an avid collector of vinyl records with over 2,000 LPs. He has a room full of memorabilia, including pieces from films and vintage television programmes, including Thunderbirds.

“My retirement is a bit like my career, I haven’t got a definitive plan,” he says.

The early days of Piper’s career were motivated by perks rather than a direct path to the top. At the age of 21 he became one of the youngest managers at a defence and aerospace company in North London. “My sole driver for that role was that I’d get a parking space right outside the office,” he says.

As he’s taken each new career step, Piper says he has asked himself ‘can I do more than this?’

One of his biggest life changing moments was after his eldest son, Jack, was diagnosed with autism and learning difficulties in 1998 at the age of five.

During a surgical procedure, Jack’s bowel was perforated in more than 13 places, leaving him needing round-the-clock care.

Piper and his wife, Ruth, won a £500,000 payout after suing the hospital in the High Court.

"I was well out of my comfort zone and it took eight years but that experience made me realise the level of resilience and drive that I’ve got,” he says.

He entered the insurance industry in 1986, working for Irish Life, Liberty Life, Liverpool Victoria, Scottish Legal Life, Eagle Star and Simply Health, before joining Sovereign Healthcare as sales and marketing director in 2006.

From shying away at small business events to speaking in front of tens of thousands of Rugby League fans at the Odsal Stadium in Bradford, he says his confidence has grown.

His first director role was in 2000. He admits he had imposter syndrome, imagining that all the other directors would be far more qualified, but that myth was quickly dispelled. “I was sitting in one of the senior team meetings and I’d never heard so much nonsense and incompetence in my life,” he says. “That experience opened my eyes.”

He regularly quotes two habits from Stephen Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. “Start with the end in mind, and seek first to understand, then be understood,” he says.

Looking ahead to his legacy at Sovereign Health Care, Piper says he hopes he leaves his mark as a principled businessman. “I’ve always put principle above personal gain,” he says.

He adds:“We don’t own this business, we’re custodians of it. If I can say I left the business better than I found it, I’ll say job done.”