AMNT Live Event – What are my Duties After Mansion House?

Maggie Rodger

AMNT Co-Chair

Maggie joined AMNT in 2016 and has been an MNT of The Church of England Pensions Board for 5 years and currently chairs their Audit and Risk Committee. CEPB is a fund for those connected to the Church of England with £3bn AUM, 41000 members and almost 700 employers. It encompasses a number of different schemes including DB, which is open to accrual and new members, plus a number of Hybrid schemes and a small DC scheme for different groups of members. Just to be a little different it is a Charity which also manages retirement housing for Clergy and others serving the Church. CEPB, together with other central Church investment funds, takes ethical and ESG investing very seriously and has an in- house team managing their engagement activities. They were a founder signatory to Net Zero and have committed to using the Net Zero Investment framework.

Graham Martin

Business Development Director – Supporting trustees on behalf of Schroders Solution

Graham is a Business Development Director with Schroders, developing and supporting Institutional clients via the Professional Trustee sector with over 30 years of financial services industry experience. Prior to joining Schroders (formerly River and Mercantile), Graham worked at Optima Fund Management for eleven years as Managing Director and Head of European & Middle Eastern Sales. Prior to joining Optima, Graham worked at Gartmore for nine years, the last five of which he was Hedge Fund Business Development Director on a small team selected to build a $6 billion hedge fund business. Prior to Gartmore, Mr. Martin held senior roles in investment management at BRI group and at Pointon York. Graham is also an independent consultant for Yealand Fund services. Graham is a UK Associate of the Society of Investment Professionals and has the CFA Certificate in ESG investing. He earned a II:I BA (Hons) Degree in Financial Services from Bournemouth University.

Nick Reeve

Editor, Pensions Expert

Nick Reeve is a former news and online editor for Investment & Pensions Europe (IPE), where he was part of the award-winning editorial team. He has also been European editor for CIO Magazine and worked in a number of news and features roles across the Financial Times’ retail investment and pensions trade titles.

He specialises in UK and European pensions and investment issues and has also covered regulatory developments affecting institutional and retail financial services.

Richard Fox

Head of Public Policy, Schroders Solution

Rich is the Head of Public Policy for the UK. Rich joined Schroders early in 2023 and before that spent over 15 years at the Financial Conduct Authority. While he was there, he held a range of senior roles focused on policy development and international engagement.

Iain Mackenzie

Risk Management Director, WTW

Iain MacKenzie is a highly experienced risk management professional. He has advised many large corporates and public sector bodies on risk and risk mitigation. In recent years he has concentrated on risk management for pension schemes. He is part of the Pension Governance ASK at WTW where he contributes knowledge and provides support to schemes on cyber and other forms of risk.

Luke Williams

Principal and Senior Pension Management Consultant, Barnett Waddingham

 Luke is part of the Pension Executive and Management Services (PEMS) senior leadership team and is an experienced governance specialist with a strong consulting and administration background. He has 12+ years industry experience and is excellent at building long-term relationships with his clients.

He is part of Barnett Waddingham’s General Code Steering Group. Within this group he is looking at best practice, the Effective System of Governance (ESOG), Own Risk Assessment (ORA), and how the new Code provides an excellent opportunity to not just ensure compliance but to ensure that value is being added for the long-term benefit to schemes. Luke works closely with clients to ensure services are tailored to suit their specific needs. He has a keen interest in business development activity. He was appointed to the Pensions Management Institute (PMI) Risk and Assurance Committee in September 2023.

Janice Turner

AMNT, Co-Chair

Janice Turner is founding co-chair of the Association of Member Nominated Trustees. She helped to found the AMNT because she believed that the voices of ordinary member-nominated trustees were not being heard. For more than eight years she has been putting forward the views of trustees to the industry and the government.

Janice has been a member of the Department for Work and Pensions Trustees Panel and the Actuarial Users' Committee of the Financial Reporting Council, and was a guest speaker at Harvard Law School's international pensions and capital stewardship conference. She has been named by Pensions Insight as one of the top 50 most influential people in the pensions industry. Janice believes very strongly in the right and necessity of pension scheme trustees to take seriously the longterm sustainability of their investments. But, faced with the difficulty so many pension schemes have in adopting and implementing environmental, social and governance policies in relation to the stewardship of their investments,  she devised a new approach to ESG, called Red Line Voting.  The campaign continues with government, regulators and the pensions industry to further the rights and ability of pension schemes to direct their own stewardship policy.

Janice has appeared before the Work and Pensions Select Committee to give evidence on behalf of AMNT. She is currently a member of the Financial Reporting Council's Investor Advisory Group. Janice's pensions background is in the defined benefit sphere, and she is a member-nominated trustee of the BECTU Staff Retirement Scheme. She has achieved the PMI Level 3 Award in Pensions Trusteeship. Janice is employed at BECTU, the film and broadcasting union, as the Editor of the union's journal Stage Screen & Radio magazine and she is also the union's award-winning diversity officer.

Maggie Rodger

AMNT, Co-Chair

Maggie joined AMNT in 2016 and has been an MNT of The Church of England Pensions Board for 5 years and currently chairs their Audit and Risk Committee. CEPB is a fund for those connected to the Church of England with £3bn AUM, 41000 members and almost 700 employers. It encompasses a number of different schemes including DB, which is open to accrual and new members, plus a number of Hybrid schemes and a small DC scheme for different groups of members. Just to be a little different it is a Charity which also manages retirement housing for Clergy and others serving the Church. CEPB, together with other central Church investment funds, takes ethical and ESG investing very seriously and has an in- house team managing their engagement activities. They were a founder signatory to Net Zero and have committed to using the Net Zero Investment framework.

Katherine Easter

Interim Chief Executive Officer and Chief People Officer, PPF

Katherine is our interim Chief Executive Officer and Chief People Officer.

Katherine makes sure we attract and retain the right people and shapes our communications, overseeing how we engage with our staff, stakeholders and the media. As interim CEO, she is also responsible for overseeing our day-to-day operations and long-term strategy. "I’m really proud of the working environment that the PPF has created. It is a great place to work that allows people to reach their potential while delivering brilliant service for all stakeholders."

Katherine’s experience

Katherine has worked in senior level HR positions in both private and public sector organisations. Before joining us, Katherine was head of HR, regulated industries, at the engineering consultancy Kier, previously Mouchel. In this role she led a talent management process to support the business strategy. Her work received industry recognition and delivered a two-year people strategy that increased the organisation from 800 to 2,500 people through organic growth and acquisition.

She also implemented an employee engagement strategy aimed at significantly reducing staff turnover, which resulted in Mouchel securing a top 20 place in The Sunday Times' Best Companies to Work For. Katherine currently holds a non-executive role at Isle Utilities, a technology and innovation consultancy specialising in cleantech with employees across Europe, Australia, Singapore, the US and Middle East. Katherine has an MSc in Social and Applied Psychology from the University of Kent and lives in London.

Cleo Taylor-Smith

Business Development, Rothesay

Cleo joined Rothesay’s Business Development team in 2018, having worked in their Pricing and Reinsurance team for the prior two years. She has worked on transactions with total premiums of over £35bn, including bulk annuities for the pension schemes of Rexam, National Grid, telent, Asda, Cadbury’s, TI Group and the Post Office, and the reinsurance of the £12bn Prudential annuity portfolio in March 2018. She has over 13 years’ experience in the pensions industry, including 6 years advising trustee and corporate clients at WTW on all aspects of their UK pensions arrangements before joining Rothesay. Cleo is a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, and has a first class master’s degree in Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Bristol.

Gerard Francis

UK Design and Strategic Risk, Schroders Solutions

In addition to being the lead investment advisor to a broad range of fiduciary and advisory clients, Gerard has responsibility for designing investment strategies for pension clients, including:

-Developing strategic solutions to help clients identify suitable funding and investment objectives that satisfy risk and return constraints over both the short and long-term;

-Designing investment portfolios that meet these objectives whilst satisfying ongoing governance needs, such as efficiently generating cash to pay member benefits;

-Setting how portfolios evolve towards Cashflow Driven Investing (CDI) or ‘buyout targeting’ portfolios through the use of integrated de-risking frameworks, and;

-Helping clients to become ‘transaction ready’ and ultimately buyout with an insurer.

In his previous role Gerard was Co-Head of Clients at River & Mercantile Solutions. He was responsible for the firm’s delivery of services to clients, ensuring appropriate investment strategies are in place, client teams are suitably resourced and high levels of client satisfaction are maintained. In addition, Gerard led the development of the firm’s strategic thinking, particularly around Integrated Risk Management, long-term funding targets and innovative ways to manage risk. Before July 2019 Gerard was Head of the ‘Retirement & Investment Consulting Group’ at Willis Towers Watson.  In that role, Gerard combined being a scheme actuary with responsibility for investment consulting for smaller and mid-sized schemes. This included evolving Willis Towers Watson’s fiduciary management capability into a service that was appropriate for schemes of all size, not just the largest clients.  He also developed the firm’s Integrated Risk Management service, bringing together the often competing demands of funding, investment, covenant and liability management to deliver coherent strategies for clients.

Outside of the office, Gerard shares his passion for football and motorsport with his wife and two children.

Joe Craig

Development Lead, Quietroom

Joe is a communication specialist, a best-selling author, screenwriter and speaker. He’s developed communication strategies for pension schemes, investment firms, insurers and financial institutions, big and small. His work at Quietroom is all about making complicated or difficult messages more meaningful to more people. He specialises in engaging a reluctant audience and using the tools of a storyteller to bring unloved subjects to life.