Income in Retirement - The Name of the Game for Pensions Savers

Chris is a former Pensions Minister, who now serves as Chair of the Financial Inclusion Commission, of the Lending Standards Board, of the Equity Release Council Standards Board and of The Money Charity. He is an Independent Director of the Current Account Switch Service (Pay.UK) and of Cape Claims Services, and is a trustee of GambleAware and the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute.

Chris is a member of the Treasury FinTech Delivery Panel. He has been Chief Executive of two national charities and chair or trustee of many others and was formerly Director of Financial Capability and Head of Consumer Affairs of the Financial Services Authority.

Before becoming Chair of the Money and Pensions Service, Sir Hector was the Chair of Stepchange, the UK’s largest debt advice charity. He brings vast knowledge and experience to the SFGB having spent more than 30 years working in financial services and regulation, including serving as the CEO of the Financial Services Authority, European CEO of Credit Suisse and Head of Compliance at Barclays. Outside of financial services, his work has included Chairing the Oxford University Said Business School and being a NHS non-executive director. 

Since retiring from full time work, Hector has been working to help people manage their money as well as circumstances allow and promoting a fairer financial system which works for everyone. He is currently a trustee of Just Finance, a charity which collaborates with The Church of England to promote a fairer financial system. 

Tony has worked in the financial services industry for over 30 years, starting his career with Lloyds Bank. He joined Lloyds as an office junior and worked his way up to dealing with small to medium sized businesses, handling a portfolio of clients in dealing with complex property lending facilities.

After 20 years within the Lloyds Banking Group, Tony decided to retrain as a financial adviser, working for two advisory firms over five years. Four years ago, Tony founded Chambers Financial Services initially specialising in providing mortgage advice (including equity release contracts) but now expanded to also offer pensions and investments advice. In the same period, Tony has grown Chambers Financial Services to be a five-strong advice team, servicing clients across all of Essex and beyond.

Liz is the Small Business Commissioner for the UK. She has a background in broadcasting and journalism specialising in small business, personal finance and consumer affairs and is author of several business books. She is also Chair of the Fair by Design Campaign (to tackle the poverty premium); and a non-executive Director of the Lending Standards Board and member of the Equity Release Council Standards Board.  

Until she took up the role of SBC, Liz was a Financial Inclusion commissioner, an Ambassador for Business Debtline, a member of the Fundraising Regulator Standards Board and ran BackinBusiness.org.uk to give small businesses a voice with policy makers. She worked with boards and small businesses on improving governance, trust and culture, inclusivity, employee engagement, and understanding customer behaviour. She is also a communication and presentation skills coach and chairs national and international conferences. 

Adrian is Business Development Director, Destination Retirement at HUB Financial Solutions. He is passionate about delivering innovation in the retirement space to help people achieve a better later life.

Prior to joining HUB Group, he held senior sales and marketing management roles at Barnett Waddingham, Sacker & Partners and Towers Perrin. He is also Chair of the Central London Group PLSA Committee and a regular judge at industry awards including IPE.

Adrian started his career at Pearl Assurance after gaining his degree in Management Sciences from UMIST (now Manchester University). Outside of work, he is a keen runner and due to take part in the London Marathon in October.

Andy enjoys a portfolio career as a trustee and Non Executive Director. In the world of pensions, he is Chair of Trustees of the Nat West DC Plan, a NED at Capital Cranfield, and a member of the Investment and Funding Committee of the Lloyds Banking Group DB pension schemes.

Until 2019, Andy spent 30 years at Aon as an actuarial and Investment consultant, was a member of the Global Retirement & Investment Leadership and CEO of Aon Hewitt Ltd in the UK. He also sat on the Aon Global Operating Committee.

In his spare time, Andy enjoys skiing and scrambling with his family and has recently passed his private pilots license.  He is also looking forward to more success supporting Wales on the rugby pitch.

Ankul is a Senior Investment Strategist at Vanguard. He co-leads retirement planning research team globally and his responsibilities writing articles and meeting clients to provide a Vanguard perspective on longer-term investment strategy implications. Besides retirement, he covers a broad range of investment topics, including multi asset investing, passive and active investments and advisor best practices.

Ankul has over 15 years of investment experience. He joined Vanguard from Coutts, the largest wealth manager in UK where he was the Asset Allocation Director. Prior to that, he has been a Strategist with Merrill Lynch and Barclays, which is complimented with direct experience in trading and relationship management.

He earned a Masters from Warwick Business School and is a CFA® Charterholder.

Emma is the Chair-Designate of the Pensions & Lifetime Savings Association, having chaired the PLSA’s Policy Board since 2018, and will soon assume the role of Managing Director, Workplace Savings at Aviva.

Most recently, she has been Head of DC at Legal & General Investment Management, where she was primarily responsible for developing LGIM’s DC business and investment strategy. Emma joined LGIM in 2014 from Mercer where she was a partner and Head of Mercer Workplace Savings. Prior to that, she was Head of DC Sales at BlackRock and Head of DC Pensions at Threadneedle Investments.

All told, she has more than 20 years of experience in the investment management industry. Emma graduated from Trinity College, Oxford, and holds an MBA from Manchester Business School via a Women in Management Scholarship from the Guardian.

Dr Martin Fahy is Chief Executive Officer of the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA). He joined ASFA in November 2016, and was previously a Partner in management consultancy at KPMG, where he worked with clients across the financial services and other sectors to drive transformational change.

Martin has worked in a consulting and advisory capacity in the US, Europe, the Middle East and Africa and Asia Pacific. He is a recognized thought leader in the field of Shared Services, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and Finance Transformation. He has presented at more than 500 industry and academic conferences and has published five books, three monographs and numerous articles.

From 2007 to 2011, Martin was CEO at the Financial Services Institute of Australasia (FINSIA) where he led the organisation’s transformation post the sale of its education business. Prior to FINSIA, he led strategy and development for the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) in Asia Pacific.

Martin holds a Ph.D from the National University of Ireland, is a former senior Fulbright scholar and has extensive research and policy experience from his time as an academic. He is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Technology Sydney, where he is also Chair of the Centre for Management and Organisational Studies (CMOS) Advisory Board.

David has spent his whole career working in the life insurance market, both in the UK and overseas. He initially spent 25 years as a consulting actuary working for a wide range of insurers on issues such as financial management, product design, strategy, and mergers & acquisitions.

David went on to be the Managing Director of RGA’s UK reinsurance business until 2011 before taking on the role of Chief Risk Officer and then Chief Executive of Marine & General Mutual until 2015.

Since then, he has developed a portfolio career and has been a member of Royal London’s Independent Governance Committee since its inception in 2015. He is also currently the Chair of Hodge Life,  Chair of Scottish Friendly’s With Profits Committee, a non-executive director and Chair of the Audit & Risk Committee at PG Mutual, and a member of the Compliance Committee of the Funeral Planning Authority. He is also currently a Borough Councillor in his home town of Epsom & Ewell.

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.

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.

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.

Stefan is the Director of Cardano Insights and Head of DC Design for the Group and is a sustainability champion. In his past, he held various positions at APG in the Netherlands and Skandia Life Insurance Company in Sweden.

He holds a Ph.D. from Stockholm School of Economics. Stefan is a frequent speaker and writer in the field of behavioural investing and pension design. He headed a review of the Swedish premium pension system in 2017 and has been a non-executive board member of the Fourth Swedish National Pension Fund (AP4).

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”.

David joined Mobius this year and is responsible for the setting and driving of Mobius’ DC and wider firms proposition, aligning with the vision of the Board and Mobius investors. David is also responsible for service delivery and client relationship management relating to DC clients and strategic partners.

David was Head of Investment Delivery and Strategic Partnerships for 12 years at AllianceBernstein; responsible for investment oversight of their multi asset business in EMEA, focusing on retirement solutions for DC pension schemes. With 30 years experience in the asset management and pensions sector, David has worked at Rothschild Asset Management and Sun Life of Canada Asset Management in business analyst and operational roles.

Prior to AllianceBernstein, David held positions in corporate pensions sector, fulfilling head of DC operations at Xafinity and Aon Consulting, and commercial and client responsibilities for Capita Hartshead. David believes that there is no one solution to achieving better member outcomes, but that it happens as a result of an honest and professional eco system working together, wanting to do the right thing for savers.

Eve has 22 years of experience in the UK pension industry, working in pension consulting at Mercer prior to joining Nest in 2019. Eve is currently Acting Director of Customer Engagement, leading the Directorate responsible for understanding Nest’s broad range of customer groups and ensuring that the scheme delivers to their needs.

Eve’s previous time in consulting gave her the opportunity to lead in a number of different areas, including business change and technology projects, operational management, financial wellbeing, proposition development and ultimately leading Mercer’s UK DC consulting team.

In 2017, Eve co-authored Mercer’s “The Gender Pension Gap – From Awareness to Action” whitepaper which outlined the status of the pension gender gap in Europe and detailed what industry, employers and governments could do to create change.

When not working, Eve is taxi driver to two children, a keen singer and a serial house renovator.

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.

Cristián graduated with distinction from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile with a Business Administration degree. He started his professional career as an equity analyst for Aetna Insurance. Following that training, he served as a broker for futures and financial derivatives at Celsius Mercados Futuros, a company that was associated with Salomon Brothers Inc. He rose to become the General Manager of the company and Director of Celsius Corredores de Bolsa (the brokerage firm). Towards the end of 1994, he joined the investment team of AFP Habitat becoming the CIO between 1998 and 2008, after which he was appointed CEO, a position that he has held for the past 10 years. In July 2018, he was named Chair of the AFP Habitat board.

AFP Habitat is one of the largest Pension Funds within Latin America, with Assets under Management in excess of USD 60 billion. It has been an important participant within the Chilean Capital Markets contributing significantly to the defense of minority shareholder rights. Rodríguez was awarded the In Best – the El Mercurio prize for his important contribution to the development of the Chilean Capital Markets. He also was recognized by EY and El Mercurio as the Executive of Year 2013. Since 2000 he has been a CFA Charterholder and has been President of the CFA Society of Chile and Director at Previred and Depósito Central de Valores.

With over 22 years in the UK pensions industry, Andy is widely recognised as a DC market expert, having held various senior positions within global consulting firms, within asset management and with insured/bundled pension providers.

Prior to joining Aviva Investors permanently in June 2020, Andy first delivered a project under contract supporting the formation of its future UK DC market strategy. This followed a further 7 month project with Aviva Life, where Andy re-engineered the distribution strategy for the Aviva Workplace pensions business, whilst also reviewing ‘direct’ and digital business distribution strategy for Aviva. 

Prior to working with Aviva, Andy spent 3 years running the £22bn Zurich corporate pensions business and oversaw M&A disposal to Scottish Widows (Lloyds Banking Group) in April 2018, working with the new owners in transition, up to the point of regulatory transfer of asset ownership. Before this, Andy ran the UK DC distribution team for JP Morgan Asset Management and before that, he spent the last 10 years of his consulting career advising large corporate clients as well as running teams of DC consultants in senior DC consulting positions at KPMG, Deloitte and Mercer. 

Sophia joined XPS Pensions Group in June 2020 to lead their DC business, helping clients deliver top class DC services to their members. Prior to that, she led Aon’s DC Consulting business. Sophia has over 24 years’ experience in the UK pensions industry and advises corporates and trustees on a range of DC pension solutions, developing and delivering DC strategies that optimise scheme design, ensuring effective governance and improving member outcomes. She is a well-known industry and media commentator on DC market developments and feels passionately that we must tackle short-term financial resilience as well as deliver better long-term post-retirement products, if we’re going to help today’s workforce to retire with the security and lifestyle they want; she is regularly quoted in the press and presents on DC issues at industry events.

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.

Rob is Head of Long-Term Savings Policy at the Association of British Insurers. Since joining in January 2012 he has led the ABI’s work on customers’ retirement choices, responding to pension freedoms, and policy and governance around pensions dashboards.

He now oversees long-term savings policy areas from automatic enrolment to social care, and from investment platforms to Defined Benefit pensions. He previously worked at the Money Advice Service, the FSA and in policy and public affairs roles in the voluntary and private sectors.

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.