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With more than 15 years of experience in international private medical insurance, Niki Barnes brings strategic insight, commercial focus, and hands-on leadership to her role as International Marketing Manager at William Russell.
She has held senior marketing positions at leading global insurers, including AXA Global Healthcare and Bupa Global, and is recognised for developing insight-led marketing strategies that drive growth, strengthen intermediary relationships, and enhance customer engagement.
An award-winning marketing leader, Niki is known for her collaborative approach, customer-first mindset, and ability to communicate complex propositions clearly across both B2B and B2C audiences.
At William Russell, Niki leads global marketing strategy across brand, digital, distribution, and go-to-market activity, supporting growth and retention across multiple international markets.
Working closely with teams across the business, particularly sales, commercial, and operations, she plays a key role in bringing new products, propositions, and digital innovations to market while ensuring marketing remains commercially effective and aligned with customer needs.
She leads a highly experienced marketing team and is responsible for developing integrated campaigns and initiatives that strengthen brand awareness, support intermediary engagement, and drive customer acquisition and retention.
With a strong focus on insight-led decision making, Niki also helps shape William Russell’s industry presence through thought leadership, events, partnerships, public relations, and strategic communications, helping position the business as a trusted voice within the IPMI market while ensuring marketing contributes meaningfully to the company’s commercial objectives and long-term growth.
Before joining William Russell, Niki spent more than a decade at AXA Global Healthcare in senior marketing roles, leading intermediary and corporate marketing initiatives across international markets.
Earlier in her career at Bupa Global, she specialised in acquisition and conversion marketing, building the strong commercial foundations that continue to shape her approach today.
Throughout her career, Niki has successfully led marketing transformation programmes, developed high-performing teams, and delivered strategies that have increased brand visibility, supported broker engagement, and driven commercial performance across both direct and intermediary channels.
Passionate about the IPMI market, Niki believes effective marketing plays an important role in helping internationally mobile individuals, families, and businesses understand and access the protection they need.
Outside of work, Niki enjoys spending time with her family and is devoted to her cats. Having successfully conquered Snowdon despite a healthy fear of heights, she’s decided her future adventures are best enjoyed a little closer to sea level.
Known for her warm, people-focused approach, she brings the same care, energy and curiosity to life beyond the office as she does to her work and the teams she leads.
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