Local Profile: Paul Smith
How Paul Smith Became One of Bridgwater’s Most Trusted Faces
Paul Smith has built more than an insurance business. He’s helped shape a football club, sponsors numerous local initiatives every year and become one of those people who simply feels part of Bridgwater.
Read Paul’s story below…
“Everybody knows you.”
When Paul Smith climbed into the back of the Hilton Ames, Executive Commute limo, that was the first thing we said to him.
Paul’s not loud. He’s not famous. But because after four decades in business, coaching football and supporting the Bridgwater community, he’s become one of those rare people whose name carries trust.
“My goal in five years’ time?
Still be here.”
School was a Social Club.
Most people in Bridgwater know Paul Smith.
But for much of his childhood, he was just another lad growing up on the Hamp side of town.
A Blake School pupil. Football mad. Surrounded by good friends. He describes school as, “a social club,” and remembers those years with obvious affection.
With a surname like Smith, he laughs that he was “quite anonymous.” And there is nothing to suggest the life ahead of him would be anything out of the ordinary. Except there was a story he didn’t yet know…
The Discovery
Paul was in his thirties when a hidden part of his family story finally surfaced.
He discovered he was half Japanese.
Growing up, all he knew was that his father had been evacuated to Bridgwater during the Second World War after losing his parents.
The truth ran deeper. His grandfather had been a Japanese merchant seaman, and his father survived the Blitz after being moved from London’s East End to Somerset.
Later, Paul uncovered photographs, shipping records and fragments of history that had been missing for generations.
“I said, ‘Dad, why didn’t you ever tell us?’” Paul recalls.
His father’s answer was simple: “I’m illegitimate. It’s nothing to boast about.”
For Paul, it wasn’t shame. It was a bigger story.
“I’d always thought I was just a Bridgwater boy,” he says.
“Then suddenly your story becomes much bigger than that.”
Insurance… By Accident
If his family discovery reshaped the past, his career started with almost no plan at all.
After what he calls “rubbish A-levels”, his dad offered simple advice: “You’d better get a job.”
Insurance wasn’t a dream. It was where an opportunity appeared.
Paul had spent his teenage years filing paperwork in an insurance office, so when a full-time role opened up, he took it, a quiet decision that set the course for the next four decades.
Manual work was never going to be his path. “I always say I don’t do manual,” he jokes. “I’ll do everything else.”
In 1993, he started from the kitchen table at home, then turned a loft conversion into both an office and his son Sam’s bedroom, before moving into a small office in North Petherton.
Today, Paul Smith Associates has been based on Bridgwater High Street for nearly twenty years.
Ask if any of it was part of a grand plan and he just smiles: “It’s all been quite accidental, really.”
Golden Nuggets
Lessons & insights from the commute
Still Here
Paul says his ambition isn’t to sell the business or become huge. It’s to continue serving Bridgwater.
Community is built by showing up
It’s the High Street office, knowing customers, coaching football, & supporting community.
Helping is a bigger legacy than selling to people
Paul’s biggest impact probably isn’t the policies he writes. It’s the difference he’s made around town.
More about Paul Smith’s work…
Paul Smith runs a family owned independent insurance brokerage, in the High Street in Bridgwater.
The company specalise in commercial and bespoke insurances, whether you are self-employed or run a larger commercial business.
Paul Smith Associates can also help you with personal insurances too.
The Executive Commute Conversation
Watch Paul Smith’s Executive Commute below. He talks with Pippa Whitfield about discovering his family’s hidden history, building a business from the dining room table, why Road Lane Wanderers means so much to him, and what keeps him passionate about Bridgwater after more than forty years.
Take Part In The Executive Commute
Every person has a story.
Executive Commute is Sedgemoor fm’s original interview series, where we leave the studio and get to know the most inspiring people in Somerset, in a Hilton Ames limo.
From business owners and community champions to sports personalities and local creatives, every journey uncovers the moments that made them, the lessons they’ve learnt, and the stories that rarely get told.
The interviews are with Pippa Whitfield. And it’s all captured by Justin Krause from IMAPCT 20Twenty, for broadcast on radio and YouTube.
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