Background and career
Ivan Julian Massow (born 11 September 1967) is a British financial services entrepreneur, gay rights campaigner, and media personality. He is also a former chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. He has been active in UK politics, formerly as a member of the Conservative Party and since 2016 in the Liberal Democrats. He is Master of the Southdown and Eridge Hunt.
Massow was born Ivan Field in Brighton, East Sussex. His relationships with his father and subsequently his stepfather were poor; as a boy he ended up being cared for by social services, before being adopted as a pre-teenager by John Massow. Commenting on his life prior to his adoption, Massow has stated that "My life up to then is a bit of a blur. I had four different families, my name changed from Field to Mitchell to Massow, I was moved around for various reasons." Massow is dyslexic and left school at 16 with one O-level in metalwork, with possibly others in photography and history; however, information regarding his early qualifications is ambiguous, and Massow himself has commented that "I lied about them so much, I can't remember what's actually true." He studied at Eastbourne for a BTEC in art and design, then moved to Bristol and was employed by an insurance firm. In 1990 Massow moved to London and started his own financial services business.
In 1990 and with less than £5,000 Massow started Bowater Massow, later to become Massow Financial Services Ltd, running it initially from a squat in Kentish Town, London, using just a mobile phone. Massow specialised in offering financial services to gay people, in particular sourcing competitively priced insurance and mortgages for customers whose sexuality previously resulted in their being charged much higher premiums. Massow's company soon attracted customers and expanded; the success and high profile of the business resulted in Massow being voted Man of the Year by the Pink Paper in 1996, and by 1997 Massow had become a multi-millionaire. At the end of the decade his company had several offices, including branches in Edinburgh, Manchester and Liverpool, and was at the forefront of the 'gay finance' sector. At the end of 2000 Massow merged his company with another gay-orientated finance company, Rainbow Finance of Oxford, thereby creating Rainbow Massow, one of the largest independent financial advice firms in the UK. Massow took the role of chairman while Louis Letourneau, who had run Rainbow Finance, became managing director. The market value of the new company was £20 million, and Massow predicted that turnover would rise from £2 million per annum to over £3.5 million. However, within one year the firm ran out of money and was placed in receivership. Both Massow and Letourneau blamed each other for the firm's demise. Massow bought the company back from the receiver for about £1.5 million and subsequently re-established it.
In 2001 Massow set up Jake, an online social networking site for gay professionals.
Between 2003 and 2004 Massow was director of another financial adviser firm, this time a tied agent of the Zurich Advice Network (previously Allied Dunbar). Massow had previously campaigned against what he saw as Allied Dunbar's anti-gay underwriting practices, but he claimed that "they've moved on and, for the sake of my customers, so must I [...] if other gay financial advisers think they're doing the best for their customers by blackballing all the companies that were once out of line (there were about eight of them) when it came to gay issues – then their priorities are very strange. Financial advice is about getting the best product – not petty grudge bearing." Massow accepted a transitional loan of £330,000 to enable office relocation and staff training. However the arrangement was short-lived and ironically ended after a dispute between Massow and Zurich over Zurich's approach to insuring the gay clients in which the firm specialised. A long £13 million legal case followed which was settled out of court.
In September 2011 Massow set up Pay Me My, a trading name of Massows Limited, which offered customers a rebate of 80% of the 'trail' commission paid to their existing advisers if the customer switched their insurance, pension and investment policies to the agency of Pay Me My, who would take 20% as their fee. Massow defended the business model of the firm from suggestions that it would not be viable following changes to financial regulation in the UK due to start on 1 January 2013; however, it ceased trading in August 2013 when the government banned commission rendering its services obsolete. The firm informed its clients that, should they choose to remain with the company, all future trail commissions would be retained and not rebated. This action was unpopular with customers, therefore Massow agreed to sell the remaining assets under management to Clubfinance, who would continue rebating the majority of their commission.
