VFM - The Critical Metric in UK Pensions

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. 

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). 

Lesley is currently President of the Pensions Management Institute.  Her career in pensions has spanned nearly forty years and she has held a number of senior pensions management roles with organisations including HSBC, EMI, Motorola and Reed Elsevier.

Until recently, she was an independent member of Prudential’s Independent Governance Committee and Master Trust Board and was Chair of the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association. She is also chair of the advisory board to a community theatre company.

Lesley’s particular interest is in demonstrating how strong governance and engaging communications contributes to better outcomes for members of workplace pension schemes.

Robin has been at Nest since August 2012 and now leads the business development team. Previously, Robin worked for a large employee benefits consultancy predominantly in the corporate pensions market. An experienced public speaker, with over 20 years’ experience in financial services, he brings a variety of skills and knowledge to his role.

He is currently completing a Master’s Degree in Behavioural and Economic Science.

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.

Daniel joined Border to Coast in September 2018 as Chief Investment Officer, following 8 years at Saudi Aramco, where he was Head of Portfolio Management. Daniel is responsible for Border to Coast’s Internal management (Equity & Fixed Income), External management (Equity & Fixed Income), Alternatives (Infrastructure, Private Debt & Private Equity), Real Estate, Research and Investment Risk teams and the lead executive on Product Design.

At Saudi Aramco, he successfully set up their alternative asset programs (Absolute Return, Private Markets & Real Assets) and restructured Public investments (Listed Equity and Fixed Income) and then span-out the corporate investment department into a standalone investment subsidiary. Prior to this, he worked in Germany as a senior founding member of Prime Capital investment team and as an Investment Director at consultancy FERI. He started his career as an Interest Rates dealer and also worked as a Global Macro Derivatives Portfolio Manager.

Andy joined Capital Cranfield Trustees in 2017. Before joining Capital Cranfield, Andy acted as adviser to trustees and employers at Watson Wyatt, Hewitt Bacon & Woodrow and latterly as a partner at LCP.

In 2017, he was appointed as Chair of Trustees to the Smart Pension Master Trust followed by The Lewis Workplace Pension Trust, followed by BOC RSP, The Yorkshire & Clydesdale Bank DC Scheme and Mizuho International DB Scheme. He also acts as co-Trustee for HSBC’s master trust and the PMI DB scheme.

He was elected to the DC Council of the PLSA between 2013 and 2018 and now chairs the Pension Quality Mark Standards Committee and the Small Pots Coordination Group as well as sitting on the DC Asset Security Working Group and PASA’s DC Governance Group.

Tony has been Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Gresham House plc since December 2014. He chairs the Investment Committees of Gresham House plc and Gresham House Strategic plc. He led the management buy-in and established a new management team that transformed the firm from an investment trust into the listed specialist asset manager it is today with over £4bn AUM.

Tony has a long track record of investing and advising numerous public and private equity businesses. From 2002 to 2011, he established and grew SVG Investment Managers before being asked to lead SVG Advisors (formerly Schroder Ventures, London) as CEO. He started his career at Phillips & Drew Fund Management (later UBS Global Asset Management), one of the UK’s most prominent value investment firms with £60bn in assets under management at its peak and where he was a member of the Investment Committee. He was also previously Chair of the LPFA Investment Panel and Non-executive Board member.

Tony has over 25 years of investment experience and holds an MA in Management Studies from the University of Cambridge (where he was also a junior rugby international and Blue).

Laurie has spent a lifetime in pensions, investment and retirement related areas. He is a non-executive director of NOW Pensions Limited, a member of the Independent Governance Committee of Zurich UK, and chairs B Different, a financial services research agency. He is a Commissioner of the Financial Inclusion Commission, and a member of advisory boards of Lincoln Pensions and Fairer Finance.

He has been a trustee of the Quest School for autistic children for 15 years and is a member of the ‘Employ Autism’ Development Board. established by Ambitious About Autism.

A founder director of NEST, of the Pensions Regulator and of the Money Advice Service, Laurie chaired Marine and General Mutual Assurance and the ABI’s pensions and savings committee. During his executive career he was corporate development director of AEGON UK and deputy chief executive of National Provident Institution. He was appointed CBE for services to pensions reform in 2006. Laurie is a fellow of the Chartered Insurance Institute and of the Pensions Management Institute.

David has over 30 years of experience in the UK insurance industry. He qualified as an actuary in 1988 and has held various actuarial, marketing and financial risk management roles in a number of life insurers, including 5 years as Chief Actuary, UK & Europe at Standard Life. From 2012 to 2017, he was a partner at Deloitte, specialising in actuarial audit and review work, including providing Independent Expert reports to the Court on the policyholder impact of five different inter-company transfers of insurance business. Having retired from Deloitte, he now holds a number of non-executive roles with UK insurance companies.

David was President of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) from June 2013 until June 2014. Prior to becoming the President-Elect of the IFoA in June 2012, he was a non-executive member of the then Board of Actuarial Standards of the Financial Reporting Council (from January 2010). He was a member of the Independent Project Board that oversaw the ABI’s audit of the legacy pension schemes identified by the OFT as being at risk of being poor value for money, whose December 2014 report included a number of recommendations for IGCs to follow.

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.

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.

After graduating in 1976, Glyn started with CT Bowrings working on the administration of their staff pension schemes. He then worked in pension consultancy for a few years before joining the trade union Nalgo in 1987. After merger in 1993, he became Head of Pensions for the new union UNISON. Glyn has been at the forefront of all the regulatory changes for the LGPS and NHSPS advising members and supporting negotiations. He has also worked on all the other pension schemes that UNISON members belong to, in the energy, water, higher education and voluntary sectors.

He led negotiations to allow contractors to be able to gain admitted body status in the LGPS for outsourced members in 2000. He has supported members through the pension disputes in 2007 and 2011, and works continuously on protecting good pension provision for members and increasing employer contributions to DC arrangements, where this is not possible.

Charles spent more than 25 years in investment banking, working with JP Morgan, Kleinwort Benson, BZW and Credit Suisse, both in London and in New York. He ran the Equity Capital Markets departments at both Kleinwort Benson and BZW (until it was acquired by Credit Suisse) and at Credit Suisse he became Head of Equity Capital Markets in Europe and a member of the bank’s European Investment Banking Committee, as well as chairman of the firm’s Corporate Broking business.

Charles left banking in 2006 to set up a hedge fund business and later joined a London listed hedge fund management company, where he became Chief Investment Officer and, later, CEO. In 2012, he joined the corporate intelligence company, Hakluyt, where he worked for a number of investor clients in the infrastructure sector and in 2014, he joined Gatwick Airport Limited as its Director for Corporate Affairs and Sustainability and a member of the Executive Board, a post he held until joining ATLAS in 2017.

Ben is currently Secretary to the Trustees of the Royal Mail Defined Contribution Plan. Previously, Ben worked at JLT until 2014, advising a portfolio of clients as Investment Consultant. His role at Royal Mail is broader and has included dealing with the challenges of Communications and with the “Freedom and Choice in Pensions”.

Elizabeth is Chair of the Trustees of the Aviva Master Trust, and is also a member of the Audit and Risk Committee. She was appointed in May 2020, following her retirement from her executive career on 31 March 2020. Elizabeth was Trustee CEO of the HSBC (UK) Pension Scheme, from January 2015 until her retirement, leading the team which was accountable to the Trustee, which managed the large and well funded DB scheme and the largest single occupational DC scheme in the UK.

Elizabeth is also the non-executive Chair of the Management Board of Barnett Waddingham LLP and a trustee of two charities. She was a Senior Partner at Mercer Limited (2003-2014), where she latterly was a member of the UK Leadership Team. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, and cut her teeth in the pensions industry as a pension scheme auditor at Price Waterhouse, and then PwC.

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.

Chris is the Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of ClearGlass, which provides investment-cost reports to pension funds by collecting data from asset managers according to the standardised formats developed by the FCA Institutional Disclosure Working Group (IDWG), which Chris chaired. He is MD of FiNexus, a knowledge-transfer and research organisation. He also advises the UK Government, Regulators, the World Bank and various trade bodies on pension fund Corporate Governance and Cost Transparency.

He is also a Visiting Professor at the University of Leeds and Professor of Practice at Newcastle University Business School.

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.

Janette is one of the founding directors of Ignition House. She has more than twenty years research experience and brings a broad range of research and consultancy skills and experience from her previous roles. Janette is responsible for new business development and is Head of the Financial Services and Public Sector Practices. She started her career as an economist at the Department of Work and Pensions, where she spent five years advising ministers and policy makers. This gave her a solid grounding in research skills and an understanding of the public sector.

She moved to be Chief Economist at the Association of British Insurers to build detailed knowledge of the insurance sector. From there, she led a team of thirty analysts covering all aspects of Financial Services as Head of UK Financial Services Research at McKinsey and Company. She was part of a pan-European team, which gave an international flavour to her research skill set. She also worked in a small team for a year to develop and implement McKinsey’s knowledge management strategy.

As Director of the Financial and Public Sector Practice at IQ Research, she built a solid practice of bespoke and syndicated work for financial services companies, economics consultancies, regulators, and trade associations. Janette is a well-known industry expert on the life and pensions sector, and often writes articles for the trade press.

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.

Rhys is Strategy Director at communication consultants, Quietroom. He joined Quietroom in 2006 as its first employee, and now sits on the company’s board. Rhys has 25 years’ experience as a writer, strategist, consultant, coach and public speaker. He’s devoted the last 15 years to making important but unloved subjects like pensions, investments and insurance more meaningful to more people.

He’s also enjoyed a successful parallel career as a singer, songwriter and a musician, work that has earned him 3 million Spotify streams and 2 internet death threats.

ATLAS Infrastructure was founded in early 2017 with the backing of Global Infrastructure Partners, the preeminent specialist investor in private infrastructure with some $70bn under management. The firm is a specialist investment manager aiming to provide investors with consistent returns in excess of 5% over inflation through long-only investment in the equity of listed infrastructure companies.

Our focus is on the underlying long-term cash flows of these companies through analysis of their component assets, essentially adopting a private markets approach to modelling investment returns over a ten year period. Our process places a particular emphasis on climate change: ATLAS Infrastructure is a member of the PRI, the IIGCC and a founding signatory of the Net Zero Asset Manager initiative.

0ur flagship fund is a Dublin domiciled UCITS ICAV, the ATLAS Global Infrastructure Fund, and is qualified as an Article 8 vehicle under the recently introduced SFDR regulations; the firm also manages segregated mandates in the listed infrastructure sector. ATLAS’s clients include pension funds in the UK, Australia and Canada.

Quietroom are here to make pensions more meaningful to more people.

We’re writers and strategists, supported by designers, developers and filmmakers. We’re on a mission to make pensions more meaningful to more people. Thanks to our work, people are better informed and better off. That’s exciting.

Pensions affect everybody’s future. But they’re hard to understand and even harder to love. They’re invisible and intangible – until you need them.            

That’s a problem for pension savers, because we can only make choices that leave us better off in the long-term if we understand those choices and what they mean for us. It’s a problem for pension providers, because we can’t reach the people whose lives we’re trying to improve if we talk in a way that makes them switch off. And it’s a problem for society too. We’ll only tackle big issues like the ageing population, the savings gap and the transition to a low-carbon economy if everyone feels confident asking questions, challenging assumptions and contributing ideas.

That’s why we approach pensions communication in the way we do. We want to encourage as many people as possible to join the conversation – so everyone can make better decisions about their future.