Premium funding pioneer and insurance industry figure Grant Burley died at the weekend in an aircraft accident.

The experienced pilot was flying from Toowoomba to his home near Camden Haven in northern NSW when his twin-engine aircraft crashed close to his private airstrip. The bodies of Mr Burley, 51, and his companion on the flight, Suzanne Rohleder, 50, were found in the wreckage.

Mr Burley had worked in insurance since 1983, when he left school in suburban Melbourne to join a brokerage owned by Westpac Bank. In his early 20s he joined Custom Credit to develop a premium funding product.

When Custom Credit lost interest he took the product with him to a small company called Insurance Funding, which he ended up running. Manufacturers Mutual Insurance (MMI), one of the forerunners of Allianz Australia, took an interest in the business, which evolved into Hunter Premium Funding.

At the age of 32 Mr Burley became a chief GM at MMI, with responsibility for Hunter, Club Marine and the company’s compulsory third party insurance businesses. Allianz bought MMI in 1998, and two years later he left and bought a small premium funder named Focus, which he developed into Pacific Premium Funding.

By 2004 Pacific was the Australian market leader in premium funding, when it formed a joint venture with GE Capital’s funding business. In 2008 he and business partner Stuart White sold Pacific to GE, with Mr Burley becoming its non-executive chairman.

Two years later he left the industry after Macquarie Bank bought the operation.

An experienced pilot, Mr Burley and his wife Kym – who he met when she was an employee of Pacific – regularly flew between their homes in Camden Haven and Sydney.

He had advanced flying qualifications in both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, and devoted a great deal of his spare time to the voluntary CareFlight service.

The Burleys maintained many friendships in the industry following the purchase of the Pacific operation by Macquarie Bank in 2010. In recent years he was involved in a number of business ventures.

Mrs Burley, who was a popular figure in the industry, died suddenly in March 2014.