Sanjay Gupta

Senior Director, Willis Towers Watson

I am Scheme Actuary to five schemes ranging from £150 million to over £1 billion, and also advise a small number of scheme sponsors. I particularly enjoy establishing strong relationships with my clients.

I have been working closely with my clients to help them through these challenging financial conditions.  Understanding the impact on the scheme sponsor is a key part of this and I have been working closely with trustees to understand the relationship between funding and the strength of employer covenant, particularly where there is an overseas parent.

Recent projects have also included understanding the implications of closure to future accrual, robust funding discussions with employers through to designing “journey plans” to improve the longer term security of members’ benefits (including considering de-risking and liability management solutions).

I hold various leadership roles with Willis Towers Watson including leading our Trustee Consulting issues team, and am therefore well linked-in with WTW experts on all matters affecting trustee clients.  I also represent WTW on Council for The Society of Pensions Professionals (SPP), a broad based industry group.

Janice Turner

Co-Chair AMNT

Janice Turner is founding co-chair of the Association of Member Nominated Trustees. She helped to find 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 long-term 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.

David Fairs

Executive Director for Regulatory Policy, Analysis and Advice- The Pensions Regulator

David Fairs is responsible for development of policy for TPR and has oversight of TPR’s professional advisers including lawyers, actuaries, investment advisers and business analysts.

David is a former Chairman of the Association of Consulting Actuaries and Director of the Association of Consulting Actuaries Limited, a former Council member of the International Actuarial Association, and inaugural Chairman of the Joint Industry Forum for Workplace Pensions. He was also a Council member of the Society of Pension Consultants and is immediate past Chairman of the Actuaries Club.

David was a Senior Partner in the Pensions practice at KPMG where he advised on the design, implementation, management and communication of pensions and employee benefit arrangements. Immediately prior to joining TPR, David developed and lead the Trustee Board Effectiveness service provided by KPMG and in collaboration with the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association. He has previously worked with DWP and HM Treasury on pensions and pension taxation policy.

Graham McLean

Title

WTW

Sir Steve Webb

Partner, LCP

Steve Webb was Minister of State for Pensions between 2010 and 2015, the longest-serving holder of the post.   During that time he implemented major reforms to the state pension system, oversaw the successful introduction of automatic enrolment and played a key role in the new pension freedoms implemented in April 2015.

Steve was a Liberal Democrat MP from 1997 to 2015.  Before this he was professor of social policy at Bath University for two years, having previously worked for nine years as an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

He was awarded a knighthood in the 2017 New Year’s Honours list.

Janice Turner

AMNT, Co-Chair

Janice Turner is founding co-chair of the Association of Member Nominated Trustees. She helped to find 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 long-term 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.

Richard Akroyd

Senior Director

I have over 25 years’ experience advising trustees and scheme sponsors on their pension arrangements, and am the scheme actuary to schemes of varying sizes ranging up to over £3 billion.  I am also chair of trustees for the Towers Watson Pension Scheme, so am used to seeing pension challenges from a trustee’s perspective based on my own experience over the last 10 years.

Throughout my career I have enjoyed a variety of roles contributing to Willis Towers Watson’s thought leadership, including as a member of our Trustee Consulting Leadership team, with responsibility for our thinking ahead group, and providing the trustees' angle to our corporate consulting group.  Over the last three years, as Head of GMP Services, my focus has been to bring together all of Willis Towers Watson’s resources to help clients manage their GMP legacy and, in particular, leading our response on the Lloyds GMP Equalisation Judgment.

I am a member of the cross-industry working party working with the DWP on GMP conversion and am part of the industry working group which produced GMP equalisation methodology guidance in September 2019.  I have also contributed regular articles for PMI News.

Chantal Thompson

Partner, Baker McKenzie

Chantal is a Partner in the Pensions Department. She has extensive experience advising clients on all aspects of UK pensions law and was recognised as an “Acritas Star” 2018. She also serves on the International Committee of the Association of Pension Lawyers and the Management Committee of London Cyrenians Housing Limited.  She is a frequent speaker at seminars and courses on multiple aspects of pension law.

Chantal advises companies and trustees on a wide range of legal issues arising from the operation of occupational pension schemes. Her practice focus includes pensions issues arising from outsourcing — including transfers from the public sector — as well as the full range of advisory work for employers and trustees. Chantal has worked on several projects involving the capping of final salary liabilities and securing of final salary benefits.  She also the leads the Pension group's "Future of Trusteeship and Governance" team.

Mark Solomon

Senior Associate, Baker McKenzie

Mark is a Senior Associate in the Pensions Department and has been with the firm since 2000. Mark is a member of the Association of Pension Lawyers. He is also a member of the PLSA City & Eastern Group.

Mark advises both companies and trustees on all aspects of UK pensions law for contentious and non-contentious matters across multiple industries.  This includes advising on liability management exercises, establishing, amending and winding up pension schemes, scheme mergers, negotiating pension terms in corporate mergers, acquisitions and outsourcing contracts, reviewing investment management agreements and common investment funds, advising on pension rights for mobile employees and resolving pension disputes.

Robert Wallace

Partner & Head of Governance, XPS

Rob is a Partner at XPS Pensions Group. He is Scheme Actuary to a number of schemes with assets ranging from £10m to £1.5bn. He is head of the Governance Solutions Team at XPS, with a focus on helping companies and trustees understand and manage their pension risks.

David Bird

Director, Willis Towers Watson

David is the Head of Proposition Development for LifeSight in the UK. He has worked for over 30 years in pensions, 20 of which have been at Willis Towers Watson.

David has had a wide ranging career mostly as a consultant to employers helping them build compelling pension provision for their employees. Many of the projects have focussed on pension change and have included design and communications projects.

David has been associated with LifeSight, Willis Towers Watson’s master trust from developing the business case to designing and building the proposition and now implementing. He is looking forward to building the proposition to meet the needs of employers and members.

Susan McIlvogue

Head of Trustee DB Consulting, Hymans

Susan is Head of Trustee DB Consulting and part of the wind up team at Hymans Robertson. She has nearly 25 years' experience working with a wide variety of trustees and companies to help manage their defined benefit pension schemes, with assets ranging from £50 million to over £10 billion.

Susan believes in a holistic approach to managing risk, bringing together funding, investment and covenant risk to form a cohesive strategy. She has advised and guided trustees and companies through complex funding negotiations, significant corporate transactions, scheme mergers, benefit changes, and the myriad of legislative changes over the years.

Christine Cumming

Head of Scheme Wind-up, Hymans

Christine is Head of Scheme Wind-Ups at Hymans Robertson where she spends her time working with trustees to help them prepare for and subsequently wind up their schemes efficiently and effectively. More generally, Christine has over 20 years‘ experience of advising clients on a range of issues including funding strategies, bulk transfers, benefit design, risk transfer and scheme wind up.

Christine’s approach is to work collaboratively with trustees and employers to get the best results for clients and the pension scheme members.

Neil McPherson

Managing Director, Capital Cranfield

Neil joined Capital Cranfield in August 2014 as Managing Director and a member of the company's board. Neil is responsible for their commercial, operational and business development activities.
Neil has extensive commercial and fiduciary experience working with pension funds over a 30 year career. At Citigroup, he established Citigroup Asset Management's European Retirement Services business and was a trustee of the UK pension scheme, where he chaired the investment committee. At Standard Life plc, he set up Standard Life Investments' European client business and was Director of Group Relationship Management.
Neil acted as independent chairman of the Kosovo Pension Savings Trust for seven years from its inception and was a member of the Expert Group on Russian Pension Reform. He also acts as the Council Director for the Conference Board's European Pension Council, a pan-European group of multinational corporate pension funds.
Neil holds a degree in Modern History from Oxford University.

Robert Haas

WTW

WTW

Costas Yiasoumi

WTW

Sammy Cooper-Smith

Head of Business Development, Rothesay Life

Sammy has played a lead role in transactions with the pension funds of Uniq, MNOPF, the Civil Aviation Authority amongst others as well as the reinsurance of the Prudential, Zurich Assurance and Scottish Equitable annuity portfolios. Sammy started his career at Prudential later joining the buy-out start up Paternoster which was acquired by Rothesay Life in 2011.

Mike Clark

Managing Director, Ario Advisory

Mike is Founder Director of Ario Advisory, a responsible investment advisory firm, working with asset owners, investment managers, regulators, policymakers and others. He is a Non-Executive Director at Brunel, the investment management company formed to deliver pooling for 10 LGPS clients. An actuary, Mike represents the IFoA on the Advisory Council to the Sustainable Finance Programme at Oxford's Smith School. Mike also sits on the WHEB Asset Management independent Investment Advisory Committee. He was Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee for their Green Finance inquiry, and provided informal input to the Treasury Select Committee for their UK Decarbonisation and Green Finance inquiry. This input contributed to the Committee’s letter to the FCA regarding the AMNT Red Lines Voting guidelines. Also, he is part of an IFoA/IEMA working group preparing a Guide for users of TCFD disclosures.

Alan Gander

Committee Member, AMNT

Alan joined the AMNT in 2012 and was a Member Nominated Trustee of the Lend Lease UK Pension Scheme for 9 years.  Alan totally dedicated and fervently believe in the benefits that MNTs bring through their hard work hard in getting best outcomes for pension scheme Members.

Alan is now retired from work, previously working as a Commercial Executive in the construction industry for over 35 years, and am in receipt of a DB and DC pension; so am fully aware of the issues and traumas with establishing a retirement income.

Alan love to swim regularly, cycling whenever weather permits, painting portraits of well-known people I admire and walking in the Lake District; the most beautiful place on earth.

Sukhi Randhawa

Director, Willis Towers Watson

I am a senior Investment Strategist, partnering with clients to build deep knowledge of scheme specific circumstances and translating client desired outcomes into fit-for-purpose, workable strategy. I am also responsible for the delivery of our investment solutions across our delegated business for UK and Ireland and manage all Irish investors of our Pooled Fund solutions.

Prior to this, I led a number of strategic relationships with both DB and DC funds of varying sizes in the UK and overseas, on issues including the development and implementation of investment strategies, selection and monitoring of asset managers and member communication. During this time, I helped set up the Willis Towers Watson DC Master Trust (known as LifeSight), specifically managing the Investment workstream to design and implement the appropriate investment strategy and subsequent governance structure with the platform provider.

I engage with the global Investment leadership group with respect to the merits of good governance and business culture to help promote a positive and collaborative work environment that is aligned to the business strategy. Currently I am working with Investments’ leadership to formulate and implement sustainability principles and policies.

Bob Scott

Senior Partner, LCP

Bob Scott is a qualified actuary with nearly 40 years experience working in pensions. He helps his clients achieve their short-term and long-term objectives, advising them across a range of areas including funding strategy and negotiations, benefit design, scheme mergers, liability management exercises, pensions issues involved in corporate transactions, and as an expert in litigation involving pensions matters. Bob is one of LCP’s spokesmen on pensions issues and is regularly quoted in the press and on radio / TV. He authors “Accounting for Pensions” which has been published annually since 1994, and has chaired LCP's annual pensions conference for a number of years. He was elected as Chairman of the Association of Consulting Actuaries from 1 June 2016.

Stuart Breyer

Chief Executive Officer, Mallowstreet

Stuart is CEO of mallowstreet, the online and events platform for the UK institutional pensions industry. mallowstreet's goal is to help provide a better pension for everyone. After sustained and impressive growth it now has over 3,400 community members, and is establishing a presence in Europe and China.

Prior to this role, Stuart worked at Redington, where he helped launch mallowstreet in 2009. Having graduated from Drexel University with an MBA, followed by several years at Susquehanna International Group in Philadelphia, Stuart moved to the UK to complete an Msc in Social Planning and Policy at the LSE in 2006. He’s still here and in his free time enjoys running and travel.

Vincent Franklin

Co-founder and Creative Partner, Quietroom

Vincent co-founded Quietroom in 2003. He’s spent more than 15 years helping financial service organisations and government departments use language in a way that connects with the reader, strengthens relationships, and helps people make smarter decisions about the things that matter to them. His clients have included British Steel Pension Scheme, British Airways Retirement Plan, Bupa, DWP, Experian, HMRC, HSBC, Kodak Pension Plan, KPMG, Lloyds Banking Group, Prudential, Royal Mail Pension Scheme, The Cabinet Office, and Unilever.

Vincent started his career in the theatre. He’s still a working actor, managing to juggle his time between Quietroom and roles on TV (Bodyguard, Gentleman Jack, The Thick Of It, Cucumber and The Office) and in the theatre (This House at the National Theatre and Mary Stuart at the Almeida). He recently published his first book, Menus That Made History.