The European Pensions Awards 2012 judging panel is made up of judges from across the European pensions sphere to include providers, pension funds, consultants and representatives from various European pensions and investment associations.
The European Pensions Awards 2012 judging panel:
The European Pensions Awards 2012 judging panel:
Associations
Vince Linnane, Chief Executive, Pensions Management Institute (PMI)Biography:
Vince Linnane became Chief Executive of the Pensions Management Institute in July 2006. Before being appointed Chief Executive, during a career at PMI that has lasted more 25 years, he held the posts of Head of Product Management (from Sept 2005) and Head of Communications and Events (from 2001).
Jerry Moriarty, Director of Policy, Irish Association of Pension Funds (IAPF)Biography:
Jerry Moriarty joined the Irish Association of Pension Funds in 2007 as Director of Policy. As the voice of Irish pensions, the IAPF represents the interests of scheme members, trustees and sponsoring employers. Its members provide retirement security to over 260,000 employees, pay pensions to nearly 90,000 people and are responsible for some €80bn in retirement savings.
Jerry was Head of Compliance with the Irish regulator, the Pensions Board, for 6 years. Between February 1994 and October 2001 he worked as a senior manager in various Pensions Technical roles with Sun Life Financial of Canada in the UK. He began his career with Irish Life in Dublin in 1989.
Tim Reay, Secretary, International Employee Benefits Association (IEBA)Biography:
Tim Reay is an international benefits actuary and Principal with Aon Hewitt. He is leader of the French Global Benefits practice as well as a senior member of the UK Global Benefits practice, and is based primarily in Paris and London. He advises multinational corporations, organisations, and governments on all aspects of worldwide retirement and risk benefit provision for their employees including plan design, financing, valuation, consolidation of pension expense under international accounting standards, as well as the governance process including benefit inventory, strategy formulation, and monitoring mechanisms.
Tim joined the firm in 1984. He has a degree in Mathematics from the University of Oxford, is a Fellow of the UK Institute of Actuaries and speaks several European languages. He is Secretary and former Chairman of the International Employee Benefits Association, a regular speaker at international conferences, and a regular contributor to the media.
Pension funds / schemes
Bernard Abrahamsen, Director Trustee, M&G Pensions SchemeBiography:
Bernard has been a member nominated Trustee of the M&G Pension Scheme since early 2009. He has been involved in Pensions since 1991 and represented the National Association of Pension Funds to a Treasury Select Committee in February 2000.
Bernard joined M&G in 2002 as a Director of Fixed Income ,prior to which he worked for Schroders Investment Management as a Director responsible for the development of their Sterling fixed income business. Bernard started his career with Hoare Govett and has also worked for Rothschild Asset Management,
Bernard graduated from the University of Stellenbosch with a post graduate degree in Economics. He is an associate member of the Association of Investment Management and Research and an Associate of the UK Society of Investment Professionals.
Chetan Ghosh, Chief Investment Officer, Centrica Biography:
Chetan has worked at Centrica for the last 3 years where he is the Chief Investment Officer for Centrica’s pension schemes, and responsible for providing support to the Directors of the Investment Committee. His role covers investment strategy considerations, asset class and manager research, and the liaison with the investment advisers. His background is primarily from the consultancy side, where he spent 5 years as a pensions actuary and 10 years on the investment side, a large part of which was at Hewitt. In addition, he has spent time in the asset management industry at a multi-manager, Investment Solutions, where he developed their Fiduciary Management offering.
Andrew Gibson, Group Pensions Manager, QinetiQ
Chris Parrott, Pensions Manager, BAA (Chairman of the judges)Chris is Pensions & Reward Manager for the British Airports Authority with the primary focus of the management of BAAs pension arrangements. He has been working in occupational pensions since 1982 holding management positions for the operation of both public and private sector pension arrangements.
Chris is a Fellow of the Pensions Management Institute and a member of the Advisory Council to the Association of Investment Managers Sales Executives (‘AIMSE’). He has spoken at conferences for AIMSE, PMI and NAPF and was the author of the 'Management & Administration' module for the NAPF’s online Trustee Toolkit.
Richard Poole, Legal Director, Pensions, Royal Mail Group Legal
Biography:
Richard Poole is the pension lawyer for Royal Mail Group, which has a number of pension schemes in the UK. He has been advising on the administration and management of the Group’s pension schemes since 2000, and more recently on the transfer of the Group’s historic pension liabilities to Government. Richard previously worked in the engineering and oil industries. Richard is an Associate Member of the Association of Pension Lawyers and trustee of a charity, the Rowland Hill Fund.
Biography:
Richard Poole is the pension lawyer for Royal Mail Group, which has a number of pension schemes in the UK. He has been advising on the administration and management of the Group’s pension schemes since 2000, and more recently on the transfer of the Group’s historic pension liabilities to Government. Richard previously worked in the engineering and oil industries. Richard is an Associate Member of the Association of Pension Lawyers and trustee of a charity, the Rowland Hill Fund.
Garry Wake, Managing Director, Trafalgar House Pensions Administration Biography:
Garry Wake is Managing Director of Trafalgar House Pensions Administration Ltd (THPA). Garry’s career spans 25 years throughout which he has been responsible for delivering pensions administration services to clients and their members. He has worked in both third-party and in-house environments and across both the private and public sectors, having held senior management positions with Aon Hewitt and Towers Watson, before becoming Pensions Manager at Transport for London. He joined THPA as Managing Director in February 2008 and has been responsible for building the company’s third-party administration service model, which was launched to the market in 2010, and acting as Secretary to the Trustee of the Trafalgar House Pension Trust.
Consultants
Robert Gardner, Partner, RedingtonBiography:
Robert is Founder and Co-CEO of Redington Ltd, a progressive investment consultancy founded in 2006. He cut his teeth at Deutsche Bank before joining Merrill Lynch in 2003, working as Director in their Insurance and Pensions Solutions Group. He was responsible for implementing and executing ALM derivative solutions across several asset classes.
In 2008, Robert also co-founded Mallowstreet, the online pensions community that brings pension fund decision makers and product providers together. Robert is passionate about the impact of social media on business believing that education, collaboration and contributions are the best way to tackle pension challenges.
Sam Gervaise-Jones, Director, Business Development, bfinanceBiography:
Sam took up full time relationship management responsibilities in 2007 having begun with bfinance in 2004 as a Senior Associate in the research team. Previous to that he spent 4 years with Standard & Poor’s in their fund rating business. Sam holds the CFA charter, IMC and has an MA (Oxon) in Mathematics from the University of Oxford.
Sam has worked with many of bfinance’s insurance, corporate pension and local authority clients in both a research and relationship management capacity.
Dorothee Gnaedinger, Senior Associate, MercerBiography:
Dorothee has worked on internationalemployment and pension policies for the majority of her professional career. She is a Senior Associate at Mercer, analysing legislative updates relating to pension and health & benefit issues in the UK and Europe for Mercer consultants and clients. Dorothee is also writing a PhD at the University of Warwick, focusing on socio-economic factors influencing private pension provision in emerging markets.
Before joining Mercer, Dorothee was the Commercial Development Officer at the Pensions Management Institute (PMI) in London. At the PMI, Dorothee's responsibilities included the management of the institute's commercial and media relationships, product development and conference production. Dorothee is a regular commentator to the press and used to work as a financial freelance journalist for various international pensions magazines.
Prior to joining the pensions industry, Dorothee gained a wide variety of professional experience at Amnesty International (London), the German Embassy in Washington DC, as well as discovering the Mexican way of life at (then) DaimlerChrysler in Mexico City.
Ben McDonald, Consulting Actuary and Partner, KPMG Biography:
Ben is a consulting actuary and Partner at KPMG. He spent 10 years with Mercer before joining KPMG to help build the market-leading strategic corporate pensions team. He advises clients on all pensions-related issues such as funding negotiations, benefit design, pensions risk management, accounting for pensions and the pension implications of corporate transactions and restructurings. Ben’s clients include the AA, the BBC, Dairy Crest, Logica, Savills and TUI Travel.
Ben also advised the National Audit Office on its value-for-money review of the Pensions Regulator and the Pension Protection Fund on aspects of the levy formula.
Within KPMG, Ben is responsible for people matters within the 400 strong national Pensions practice.
Matt Wilmington, International Benefits Actuary, Aon HewittBiography:
Matt Wilmington is a Principal consultant in Aon Hewitt's International Retirement and Global Risk Services practices. Matt is focussed on advising multinationals on global pension financing and risk management strategy and implementation, Matt was the author of the recent Aon Hewitt Global Pensions Risk survey and is a frequent speaker on pension risk related matters.
Matt leads the Aon Hewitt Global Longevity Solutions Group – a centre of excellence expanding the experience gained by Aon Hewitt in UK longevity risk and its management around the world - as well as leading many of the longevity risk transactions carried out by Aon Hewitt in the UK. Matt was the lead advisor to Rolls-Royce and Pilkington on their recent longevity swap transactions.
Providers
Rob Barrett, Institutional Sales, Invesco PerpetualBiography:
Rob Barrett recently joined Invesco Institutional Sales team based in London. Rob has 25 years’ experience in the UK & European Institutional Markets both as a Portfolio Manager and more recently in Sales and Marketing.
He has worked for several firms during his career, starting out at Hill Samuel, SSgA, AXA Rosenberg and more recently Swisscanto. Rob has been a member of the FTSE committee and is Secretary of the NAPF West London Group.
Robert Branagh, Managing Director, Administration, RPMIBiography:
Robert has been a director of RPMI since 2009 where he holds the position of Managing Director, Administration. Alongside this role he is also a member of the NAPF’s Retirement Provision Council (RPC) and Non-Executive Director of the Civil Service Pension Scheme Management Board.
Before joining RPMI Robert spent 10 years at a major BPO/TPA business where he held a number of senior management positions. His experience also includes large scale operational management in the public and private sector, including EBC’s, insurance companies, TPA’s and professional firms
He is a regular contributor of articles, publications and commentary in the pension’s trade and national press and is a speaker on pension issues at many conferences and seminars. Robert has also been a member of a number of Trustee and charity boards and has a keen interest in how retirement provision in the UK impacts upon the member.
Robert is a Fellow of the Pensions Management Institute and has over 20 years experience across a number of pension related activities including administration, audit, insolvency, consultancy and best practice.
Simon Chinnery, Executive Director, J.P.Morgan Asset ManagementBiography:
Simon Chinnery is a client advisor in the UK institutional team. He joined the company in the spring of 2005. Previously, Simon was the Director of UK institutional client service with ABN AMRO Asset Management since 2000. Prior to this, Simon was an Assistant Director with Schroder Investment Management for five years where he worked with both defined benefit and defined contribution institutional clients in the pooled pensions team. Before this he worked at Gartmore Investment, also in pooled pensions client service. Simon began his career in the City in 1983 as a registered representative, stockbroking for a large private client firm.
Chris Connelly, Senior Consultant, aquilaheywoodBiography:
Chris' varied role at aquilaheywood encompasses sales consultancy and product design. Chris has over 20 years in life & pensions administration, system support, software design and product management. His career has seen him work in senior roles across the market spectrum at leading firms such as NatWest, Bacon & Woodrow, Paymaster and Fidelity. Through these roles, Chris has gained a great breadth of experience with in-house pensions administration, third party administration, financial services companies, local authorities and central government schemes.
Chris' current activities include system and process design for auto-enrolment, pan-European PPI arrangements and other European Scheme challenges, and extending aquilaheywood's leadership across Europe. Chris is a regular contributor to the pensions press and has previously worked on a number of industry initiatives including the straight-through processing of investment transactions based on the ISO20022 message standard and the Pension Regulator's data quality and record keeping guidelines.
Jerry Gandhi, Chief Operating Office, NOW: PensionsBiography:
Jerry Gandhi is a veteran of the Pensions industry having over 35 years occupational pensions experience. He brings to NOW: Pensions his depth of knowledge of delivering high quality pension provision for a range of employers and scheme sizes from medium to the very large. He has a passion for ensuring employees understand and value the pension benefits they accrue while the employer gets value for the spend to which they commit.
Jerry was, until recently, Group Pensions Director for RSA Insurance plc where pension provision evolved from being a corporate millstone to a risk managed liability. He has previously held project roles for a number of employers and their pension schemes via an independent consultancy, which he set up after leaving Inchcape in 1999 where he held the role of Group Pension Director. He is a member on the NAPF Retirement Policy Council and an advisor for The Pensions Advisory Service.
Anne Healy, Senior Managing Director UK & Ireland, MFS International Biography:
Anne Healy is Senior Managing Director of UK & Ireland for MFS International (U.K.) Ltd, a subsidiary of MFS Investment Management, and serves on the MFS Institutional Management Committee.
Anne joined MFS in 2005 from Schroders where she held the role of Director UK Institutional Marketing for 8 years. Working in the business development and client relationship management functions, Anne initially worked with internally managed pension funds, and later marketing to UK pension funds in both the corporate and public sectors.
Prior to this Anne worked for 8 years at Lloyds Investment Managers Ltd, where she had specific responsibility for developing the profile of the firm with UK local authorities.
She is a Committee Member to the National Association of Pension Funds West London Group.
Des Hogan, Head of Business Development, Thomas Miller Investment Biography:
Des Hogan is responsible for Sales and Marketing at Thomas Miller Investment, who provide investment management services for institutional and private clients.
Des has specialised primarily in the institutional pension scheme market and has been advising pension schemes and institutional clients on pension and investment issues for over 20 years. He has expertise in both Defined Benefit and Defined Contribution and also in traditional and alternative investment markets.
Currently, Des is the architect behind a practical and affordable solution for smaller defined benefit pension schemes, which involves introducing clients to a range of other pension services providers to deliver a better all round and tailored service.
Stephen Holt, Head of Institutional Business, Europe, Principal Global InvestorsBiography:
Steve is head of institutional business, UK & Ireland at Principal Global Investors (Europe) based in London. He is responsible for institutional sales and marketing strategy in Europe and acts as head of sales in the United Kingdom and Ireland, selling directly to institutions and indirectly through investment consultants. In addition, Steve serves as relationship director for various institutional clients.
Steve joined the firm in 2006. Prior to his current role, Steve was head of distribution, United Kingdom, at Santander Asset Management. His background also includes positions as head of institutional sales at Threadneedle Asset Management, as institutional sales director at Barclays Global Investors and as senior consultant and actuary at Hymans Robertson. Steve received a bachelor's degree in pure mathematics and statistics from Edinburgh University. He is a Fellow of the Faculty of Actuaries.
Julian Lyne, Head of Global Consultants & UK Institutional Business, F&C InvestmentsBiography:
Julian joined F&C in June 2008 and is responsible for managing the UK institutional business and relationships with the global consultants. Prior to this, he had worked for HSBC Investments since 2003 latterly as Head of Global Consultant Relations and was previously Head of UK Institutional Business. Julian has a BSc Hons in Psychology from City University, London.
John Owens, Principal, First AvenueBiography:
John Owens has recently joined First Avenue as a principal. John is widely recognised as one of the UK’s leading institutional investment marketers, having raised capital for fund managers for over 20 years. Previously John was a Director at Mirabaud Investment Management and has led the institutional marketing efforts at Aberdeen, Aegon and Britannia asset management firms, after beginning his career in investment consultancy roles.
Gary Smith, Managing Director, Employee Savings Service Centre, BlackRock Biography:
Gary Smith is Head of the Employee Savings Service Centre at BlackRock, specialising in delivering savings solutions, especially DC pensions, for corporate clients to offer to their employees.
Prior to joining BlackRock earlier in 2011, Gary was a member of Towers Watson's DC management team, leading the firm's DC investment business and developing its DC services and thought-leadership.
Gary is a well known figure in the UK pensions industry and is a frequent conference speaker and press commentator. He is a member of the DC Subgroup of the Investment Governance Group (IGG) and was involved in developing the IGG DC Principles.
In July 2010, Gary was voted ‘European Pensions Personality of the Year’, recognising him as someone who has truly made their mark in the European pensions space in recent years.
Matthew Swynnerton, Partner, DLA PiperBiography:
Matthew is a partner at DLA Piper and advises on all aspects of pensions law. In addition, he is a director of DLA Piper's independent pension trustee company and as such has practical day to day experience of issues faced by scheme trustees.
Matthew is a full member of the Association of Pension Lawyers(APL) and was the elected chairman of one of its regional sub-committees for eleven years. Matthew is currently a member of the Education & Seminars sub-committee, where he is actively involved in the organisation and running of technical seminars. He organised the APL's 2007 annual conference, the key technical seminar in the pensions legal industry calendar, and spoke at the 2010 conference.
Matthew regularly contributes articles to the trade press (including Engaged Investor, Professional Pensions and Pensions Age) and is invited to speak at external seminars.
Alistair Wilson, Head of Institutional Business, TwentyFour Asset ManagementBiography:
Alistair joined TwentyFour in 2011 as Head of Institutional Business, with responsibility for building on the foundations already laid in this part of the business. The majority of TwentyFour’s assets are run on behalf of institutional clients including pension schemes, banks and insurance companies.
Alistair joined TwentyFour from Neptune Investment Management, where he had led their institutional business from its inception in 2005, growing it to around £2 billion and running monies for over 80 institutional clients including UK and European pension schemes. Alistair led relationships with all Global and European consultancies as well as maintaining relationships with key clients. Prior to this, Alistair worked for 7 years at Legal & General Investment Management as a Business Development Manager with responsibility for promoting LGIM’s funds to corporate pension schemes through a variety of investment consultants.