Research & Innovation

Greg Wilson (pictured right), CEO of Seopa, said: “We have grown Quotezone.co.uk to become one of the UK’s leading insurance comparison platforms, while CompareNI.com has grown to become the leading price comparison site in Northern Ireland. More than 3 million people now use our sites to compare quotes each year, and we have partnered with hundreds of panel members, affiliates and co-brand partners as we’ve scaled up our business.

“We now want to build on this success and grow our market share. We plan to do this by investing significantly in our team with training and development, creating 31 new roles. We are also enhancing our systems and products to ensure they remain cutting edge as we enter new markets and compete with a broader group of competitors.

“Key strategic hires will include a new Head of Product, a CFO and a Head of Data Science, each of which will play a central role in helping us achieve our ambitious growth plans. A raft of other new positions in e-business development, IT, sales and marketing are also being created, while a new training programme will ensure team members at every level have the skills they need to help us deliver our growth strategy. Invest NI’s support will play a vital role in helping us scale our business more quickly, enabling us to source the right talent in Northern Ireland.”

Invest Northern Ireland has offered the company nearly £390,000 towards the new roles, as well as company-wide training and development. The roles will offer average salaries of over £35,000.

Grainne McVeigh (pictured left), Director of Scaling, Invest NI, said: “Seopa has an impressive growth history, and this planned investment across product development, marketing and skills will ensure it is well placed to meet its ambitious scaling plans. This local company is part of our Scaling Initiative which focusses on helping companies be more competitive and achieve sustainable growth. Greg has already shown his commitment to this as a participant of the Leadership for Growth programme and is now implementing a company-wide training and development programme to support his vision for the business.”