Will Pensions Consolidation Deliver Real Efficiencies?

Robert is a pensions professional with an extensive business background. He has worked for trustee, not for profit, private equity owned, and insurance businesses over the last 30 years. Robert transitioned the Office of the Paymaster General from a public to a private sector outsourcing business in the late 1990’s and worked with Cabinet Office to establish the joint venture which became MyCSP. He has also managed the back office or pension functions for several pension schemes, including the NHS, Civil Service, Royal Mail Statutory scheme, and the £20 billion Railways pension scheme. Currently, he is the Chair of the Armed Forces Pension Scheme, a Governor of the Pensions Policy Institute and sits on the Board of Local Pensions Partnership Administration (LPPA), a fully-owned subsidiary of Local Pensions Partnership (LPP).

Robert is a regular speaker at pensions and employee benefits events and is a regular contributor to the UK pensions industry press. He is passionate about ensuring that members and employers at LPFA obtain the best support and service in an increasingly challenging pensions environment. At the LPFA, Robert’s focus is to provide support and quality service to members and employers, to support the development of and oversee LPP activities, to help the LPFA Board fulfil its statutory objectives and to work with interested stakeholders to ensure LPFA is an efficient, sustainable and well-run pension fund.

Ashu has worked with many boards of trustees and sponsors of pensions schemes on optimising their journey plans to self-sufficiency or buyout. Ashu joined Clara as he believes Clara takes innovative journey plan optimisation to another level and can provide even greater security for members and even greater certainty for sponsors, all at a lower cost. 

Ashu has 25 years’ experience in the pensions market, including at WTW, where he worked as both a Scheme and Corporate Actuary. While at WTW, a project led by Ashu won the Professional Pensions Pension Scheme Trustees of the Year Award and Pension Age Best Risk Management Exercise Award. While at L&G, a project led by Ashu won the Pension Age Best Risk Management Exercise Award. 

Andrew is the Head of Defined Contribution Investment and Governance Policy at the Department for Work and Pensions. He leads for the Department on the topical issues of illiquid investments, DC market consolidation and wider value for money policy for occupational DC savers.

Andrew has worked for the Department for Work and Pensions for 3 years, previously working in its Climate Change and Responsible Investment team.

Adrian leads the Public Affairs team at NOW: Pensions, the UK’s third largest master trust. He has wide experience across the UK pensions landscape, having been actuary, administrator and trustee at both DB and DC schemes.

He is often to be found “in the thick of it” and was a member of Alistair Darling’s Stakeholder Advisory Group in 2001, of Steve Webb’s Making Auto-Enrolment Work Review in 2010 and of Guy Opperman’s Small Pots Working Group in 2020.

Adrian has published many articles and two books on pensions, Simply Secure and The Economics of the Coming Retirement Spaceship.

Paul has worked at Smart Pension for 3 years and has over 25 years’ experience with leading UK providers of workplace pension schemes. He regularly contributes to debates, blogs and presents key insights to industry professionals, and is a member of the Chartered Insurance Institute, a mentor for the PMI and volunteers for the Pension Ombudsman.

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.

Hal is an Associate Director within the Distribution Insight team at Broadridge. He is responsible for using insights generated by Broadridge’s unique datasets to advise asset managers on key opportunities across the world’s retail and institutional market, with a primary focus on EMEA.

Hal is a key contributor to Broadridge’s work on UK DB and DC pensions, and retirement income. He also leads research into various product segments, the various strands of factor investing being an area of particular expertise.

He holds an MSc Economics from LSE and taught introductory economics to undergraduates at the university.

Abigail has been the Finance Director for the Local Pension Partnership (LPP) Administration business since November 2020. Prior to joining LPP, she was the Head of Lancashire County Pension Fund for 6 years and the interim S151 officer for the London Pension Fund Authority (LPFA). 

 Abigail’s background within the Council is varied having recent experience in the governance and oversight arrangements for the Pension Fund and its shareholder relationship with LPP. Before joining Lancashire County Council, she worked as a Corporate tax manager for Deloitte and an external auditor for a local Manchester accountancy firm where she qualified as a chartered accountant and chartered tax advisor.

Anthony has been the Treasury and Pension Investments Manager for Carmarthenshire County Council (host authority of the Wales Pension Partnership (WPP)) since February 2007. He is a qualified ACCA accountant and manages the Treasury Management, Banking and Technical Accountancy services of the Council and the Fund Investments, Accounting and Governance of the £3bn Dyfed Pension Fund. He attends all relevant pooling events on behalf of the WPP. 

He has worked in financial services his entire career including Redbridge Health Authority, Inner London Probation Service, Dyfed County Council and Pembrokeshire County Council. He is treasurer of Carmarthen Town AFC, a qualified workplace coach and a keen cyclist, raising thousands of pounds for charitable organisations.

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.

Louise is a policy principal in TPR’s Regulatory Policy Directorate. She joined the Regulator in 2007, and has worked in both policy and operational teams, across issues relating to both DB and DC.  

 Louise leads the team responsible for developing policy relating to the Governance and Administration of trust-based pension schemes. This includes the ‘Future of Trusteeship’ initiative, Pensions Dashboards and the regulation of DC schemes.  

 Before joining the Regulator, Louise spent 12 years working in the pensions industry in technical roles ranging across the pension mis-selling review, third party pension administration, and TPAS (The Pensions Advisory Service). 

Magnus has provided data and research to asset management clients to help address distribution-related challenges since 1994. In 2008, he co-founded Spence Johnson to concentrate on providing data-based research services to institutional asset managers and insurers. In 2017, Spence Johnson was acquired by Broadridge and he is now helping to build Broadridge’s Global Distribution Solutions consulting capabilities from London.

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.

Mike was appointed Chief Executive Officer of LGPS Central Ltd. in March 2019. He was previously Chief Executive of the Pensions Infrastructure Platform (PiP). Mike had been Chief Investment Officer for the DMGT pension schemes and worked as an Investment Director in the City managing institutional equity portfolios at asset management firms such as Hermes and Merrill Lynch Investment Managers.

In 2013, Mike was appointed as an Independent Trustee of the Institute of Cancer Research Pension Scheme. He has also served as a Non-Executive Director of the NAPF and as Vice Chair of its Defined Benefit Council.

Mike holds an MBA from Cranfield School of Management and graduated from Cambridge University with an MA in Natural Sciences.

NOW: Pensions is an award-winning UK workplace pension provider. We look after the pension savings of tens of thousands of employers and millions of members from a wide range of industry sectors.

We have a clear mission – to help everyone save for a more financially secure future. This means achieving the best financial outcomes for our own members, while fighting for a fair pension system to enable all pension savers to enjoy the retirement they deserve. We do this by highlighting pension inequalities and campaigning for change.

We are the UK’s third largest auto enrolment pension provider by number of members.

NOW: Pensions is part of the Cardano Group, a market leader in providing risk and investment management services designed to make pensions outcomes more stable and robust.