Endgame, Middlegame or Long Game?

Jim is a Professor of Sustainable Energy at Imperial College London, with research interests in energy, climate change and technological innovation. His current main role is as Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group III for the 6th assessment cycle. He was Research Director of the UK Energy Research Centre 2004-12 and Director of the Policy Studies Institute 1998-2004. He has operated at the interface between research, policy-making and business throughout his career.

He was a member of the UK Committee on Climate Change from its inception in 2008 until 2018. He is currently chairing Scotland’s Just Transition Commission. Until June 2017, he was President of the UK Energy Institute. He was awarded a CBE for services to sustainable energy in 2013 and an OBE for services to sustainable transport in 2004.

Shalin joined DWS in 2018 and leads the UK Pensions business. His asset management experience includes the management of liability driven investment strategies for pension funds and insurers across fixed income, derivatives as well as listed and private credit. He has managed these strategies for asset owners in the UK, USA and South Africa and has 30 years of experience in pensions and asset management.

Prior to DWS, he worked for Legal & General Investment Management, AXA Investment Managers, FirstRand Bank, Mercer and Aon. Shalin is a Fellow of the Faculty of Actuaries and holds an Honours Degree in Statistics and Actuarial Science from the University of Cape Town. He is also an advisory board member for the City of London’s Taskforce on Socio-Economic Diversity.

Sally is an actuary with extensive experience in innovation, risk management and responsible investment across investment management and pensions. She was CEO of the BP Pension Scheme in 2007-14 after twenty years with Aon Hewitt working as a consultant and in investment research.

Her non-executive portfolio has included roles as trustee and investment committee chair at the Nuclear Liabilities Fund, NEST Corporation and the Lloyds Bank pension schemes. Sally’s non-executive portfolio currently includes Chair at Impax Asset Management Group plc, non-executive director at insurers Royal London, Pension Insurance Corporation and Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance, and at Local Pensions Partnership (LPP) Limited, where she chairs its regulated investment company.  

Sally is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries and has served the actuarial profession on its Council and professional committees. In the City of London, Sally is a Liveryman with both the Wheelwrights’ and the Actuaries’ Companies, having held office as the first lady Master of the Worshipful Company of Actuaries in 2016-17.

Sally’s passion for maths education is evident in her work as a member of the Royal Society’s Advisory Committee on Mathematics Education (ACME) and as Chair of the Strategic Advisory Board for the Centre for Mathematical Cognition at Loughborough University. Sally is an Honorary Group Captain in 601 Squadron of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force, introducing diverse ideas to the way that the Senior Leadership Team of the RAF think and work. 

John joined as Chief Executive Officer and an Executive Director of Railpen, in June 2019, having previously served for 12 years as a Director of the Railways Pension Scheme Trustee Company, and Chair for the last five years. John is also an Independent Trustee of the Nestle UK pension fund.

 John is a Chartered Accountant by qualification, and was previously Group Head of Pensions at National Grid. Prior to that John held senior financial, commercial and pension positions at a number of large companies, including Pricewaterhouse Coopers, South Western Electricity, Shell, HBOS and First Group.

Mike runs a responsible investment advisory firm, Ario Advisory. With a background in investment management, governance, pensions and insurance, much of his work is concerned with the financial risks of climate change. He works across the investment sector with asset owners, investment managers, policymakers, regulators, investment consultants and NGOs.

Among his roles, he represents IFoA (actuaries) on the Sustainable Finance Advisory Council at the Oxford Smith School and sits on the WHEB Asset Management independent Advisory Committee. He has recently left the Brunel (LGPS) board, where he was a NED (chairing Audit&Risk, more recently Remco), and he was Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee for their 2018 Green Finance inquiry.

Margaret is a senior consultant in Punter Southall Pension Solutions. She has more than 20 years of experience in the pensions industry advising clients on pension strategies. She has a track record of growing financial service firms, both as an independent consultant and as an executive leader.

Margaret supports the team in the design and implementation of the business development strategy of Stoneport from time to time whilst attempting to relieve the existing PSPS actuarial team of any tasks she can help. She will advise and guide Stoneport’s clients through the consolidation process.

Lara is the Head of Origination & Operations in the Bulk Annuities team at Scottish Widows. She is responsible for managing the end to end transaction process for bulk annuity deals and longevity transfers including new product development and structuring. In addition, she is also responsible for the bulk annuity administrative capabilities of Scottish Widows oversight of their Third Party Administrator.

Lara’s experience includes the £10bn transfer of longevity risk from the Lloyds Banking Group Pension Schemes to Pacific Life Re via Scottish Widows and a £500m pensioner buy-in for the Aon Bain Hogg Pension Scheme Section of the Aon Retirement Plan.

David was appointed Executive Director of Regulatory Policy, Analysis and Advice in 2018, having previously been a senior partner in KPMG’s Pension Practice. He is responsible for the development of policy for TPR and has oversight of TPR’s professional advisers including lawyers, actuaries, investment advisers and business analysts.  

He is co-chair of TPR’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, and a member of the cross Government Portfolio Committee overseeing the introduction of the Pensions Dashboard. He is the responsible Executive for climate change and ESG within TPR, and a member of the Regulators’ Stewardship Group, a member of the Working Group on Productive Finance and member of the Climate Financial Risk Forum. He is a member of the Joint Forum for Actuarial Regulation and chairs the Pensions Working Group.

David is a former Chairman of the Association of Consulting Actuaries and Director of the Association of Consulting Actuaries Limited, a former Council member of the International Actuarial Association, and inaugural Chairman of the Joint Industry Forum for Workplace Pensions. He was also a Council member of the Society of Pension Consultants and is a former Chairman of the Actuaries Club.

David is also Chair of the Genomics Development Board for Sarcoma UK, and an advisory Board member of the Association for Business Psychologists and the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Essex University.  He is a Governor of the Pensions Policy Institute.

Fiona started her career in Welfare Rights advice, including work for CPAG, the child poverty action group, helping claimants understand and challenge legislation, and decisions of the department she now works for.

However over the past 20 years, she has worked in The Pensions Regulator, across a variety of roles leading operational teams, managing change and in most recent years, as Head of Policy, introducing initiatives such as DB codes, Master Trust authorisation and taking account of climate change risks in pension scheme funding.

In July 2021, Fiona joined the DWP as Deputy Director of the Defined Benefit Policy team. Her role is demanding and cross cutting, where she supports the Directorate to deliver DB policy and work closely across the wider network of stakeholders and external organisations, supports the Minister for Pensions to deliver changes to policy regulations, including new rules for scheme funding, new powers for the regulator and support for PPF to deliver appropriate protection for members.

Mark is a Trustee and former Chief Investment Officer of the Nationwide Pension Fund, where he had responsibility for the performance and implementation of the asset allocation strategies agreed with the fund investment advisors.

Previously, he led the establishment of Nationwide’s Covered Bond programme and its Silverstone RMBS Master Trust funding vehicle. In addition, Mark has securitised UK Student Loans and a synthetic corporate bond structure along with structured transaction and investment in various ABS instruments. Past experience also includes leading the origination and structuring of social housing, PFI and commercial real estate debt transactions.

Chris was one of the inaugural Trustees at Nest, a 9 million member DC scheme, and returned to its Board in 2018, where he chairs the Investment Committee. Chris is also Chair of the Border to Coast Pensions Partnership, a pooling vehicle set up by twelve LGPS pension funds with assets of over £40 billion. In addition, he is corporate Chair at the Pension SuperFund, an initiative to consolidate private sector DB pension schemes.

Chris is a Board member for the Toronto-based International Centre for Pensions Management, and for the UK’s Investor Forum, a conduit for strategic dialogue between companies and investors, and an outcome of the Kay Review, on which Chris served.

Chris is an Actuary, a Past Chair of the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association and an Honorary Fellow of the CFA Society of the UK. He and his wife Pip have four mostly grown-up sons and in his spare time, Chris runs marathons slowly.

Jeff has over 30 years’ experience in public sector pensions and in 2011, he took on the role of Head of Pensions at the Local Government Association, where he is responsible for policy development for the Local Government and Teachers schemes, advises on the Firefighters scheme and leads for LGA on European pensions issues.

Sam is a mathematician at the University of Sheffield, having worked there as a Teaching Fellow since 2009. His interest in pensions began in 2014, when controversy over the health of the Universities Superannuation Scheme led him to delve into the murky world of defined benefit valuations. His analysis of the algorithmic de-risking of the USS’s assets played an important role in a change of direction at the scheme. He has served as a UCU-appointed negotiator on the USS Joint Negotiating Committee since 2018.

Ben is the Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Cushon, and has created our core customer proposition, strategy, and business plan. He has personally overseen the design and development of our mobile and web applications, and established many of our longstanding core strategic partnerships. Ben is an actuarial consultant by background, with over 20 years’ experience in financial services.

Kevin has held senior management positions at many large multinationals including Standard Chartered Bank, SmithKline Beecham (now GSK), GEC (Marconi) and BT plc.  A MA (Hons) economics graduate from Edinburgh University, he has run a trustee company, an investment management business and a US benefit consultancy business during his career.

A qualified professional pension Trustee, Kevin specialises in ensuring that beneficiary benefits are delivered by working with sponsors to determine the optimum strategy to deliver great outcomes and then managing the implementation effectively. Over his career he has managed programmes for both large and small schemes both in the UK and overseas.

David is Head of Strategic Client Solutions at Russell Investments. Based in London, he leads the team responsible for developing investors’ portfolio strategies in light of their specific circumstances. David works with pension fund, insurance, and other clients across EMEA to build portfolio solutions to manage risks, including liability hedging, and generate the required level of returns.

Derek has been a professional trustee for over 30 years and currently chairs the Stagecoach Group Pension Scheme and is a former chairman of The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland Retirement Benefits Scheme, the UK industry-wide Railways Pension Scheme and a former Government appointed trustee of the Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme. He was a member of the PLSA’s Investment Council between 1998 and 2006.

His passions apart from pensions include reading and visiting military history (civil and other wars after 1860), and watching St Johnstone and Scotland if/when the women in his life (wife and two daughters) and Covid-19 will allow him! His less successful investments include debentures at both Murrayfield and Hampden Park.

Henry is the founder of both AgeWage and the Pension PlayPen, designed to map the pensions genome and ensure everyone gets data driven information on value for money. He has worked most of his career in pensions, most recently as a Director of First Actuarial, and notably at Eagle Star and Zurich Assurance.

He is a well known blogger on all pensions-related issues at henrytapper.com.

In addition to his role at M&G, Mark is a Member of the Independence Governance Committee at Zurich Insurance; Executive Chairman of the UBS (UK) Pension & Life Assurance Scheme Investment Committee; and a Member of the Investment & Funding and DC Committees at Lloyds Banking Group Pensions. He was previously the Chief Investment Officer of HSBC Bank Pension Trust (UK) Limited, who he joined in 2011.

Prior to this, he held a number of senior investment roles at Prudential/M&G. These included UK Equity Fund Manager, Head of Equity Research, Director of Collective Investments, and Investment & Strategy Director for Prudential Europe. 

Nike heads the Asset Management and Pensions policy department at the FCA. As Head of Department, she is responsible for delivering the FCA’s policy strategy in relation to the asset management sector and FCA regulated pensions.

Nike has 15 years regulatory experience gained from working across the FCA, including in asset management supervision, oversight of primary capital markets transactions and heading the FCA’s prospectus approval function. 

Prior to holding this role, she was the senior manager of the FCA’s Markets Policy department. In that capacity, she gained extensive policy making experience and oversaw several teams delivering a broad policy portfolio, including in relation to the UK’s primary markets and market abuse regimes, derivatives and securitisation regulations as well as wholesale market conduct, audit and accounting and sustainability/ESG policy.