Annual Retirement Conference

Guy Opperman was appointed as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Work and Pensions on 14 June 2017. He served as a Government Whip (Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury) from 17 July 2016 to 14 June 2017. He was elected Conservative MP for Hexham in May 2010.

Renny has been at TISA for 3 years and is the Retirement Policy Manager having previously held the role of Pensions Technical Officer. He has been in the industry for almost 30 years and has held various management and senior management positions at organisations ranging from a large mutual life and pensions company, a bespoke SIPP provider, an IFA and a platform technology provider. Qualifications wise he holds the CII accreditations of Certificate in Life and Pensions, Certificate in Financial Planning and Diploma in Financial Planning.

Chris is Senior Policy Manager at Age UK, the national charity for older people. He leads Age UK’s public policy work on private pensions, employment and skills, which involves representing the interests of consumers and older people to Government, regulators and industry. He also manages a team covering a diverse range of policy issues, including housing, transport and equalities policy. He has worked at Age UK since May 2010. Prior to this he worked at the awarding body City & Guilds, where he managed its Parliamentary and public policy activity, and before that at Lansons, a public affairs agency specialising in financial services.

Tommy has been part of the Pension Scams Industry Group (PSIG) since its inception in 2014 and is Chair of the organisation’s Pension Scams Industry Forum. Tommy has over 40 years’ experience in the pensions industry and is currently Risk and Financial Crime Manager, Customer Operations, at Standard Life, where he has held a number of managerial roles and been at the forefront of the organisation’s pension scams controls since 2012.

David has been a practising solicitor for 25 years. During this time, he was first a Councillor in Enfield and then Member of Parliament for Enfield Southgate between 2005 and 2017. David championed social justice and consumer protection and led campaigns on issues affecting elderly people. David served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to three Cabinet Ministers and sat on the influential Home Affairs and Public Accounts Select Committees and was also Shadow Justice Minister from 2007-2010. David lives in Southgate with his wife Janet and their six children.

William Burrows is a financial adviser with Better Retirement and author of acclaimed retirement guides including; Retirement advice; an art or a science, Retirement is a journey not an event and You and Your Pension Pot. He runs the popular website www.williamburrows.co.uk which help peoples understand their pension and retirement options. The quality and depth of the information on his website makes it popular with everybody who is interested in pensions, annuities and drawdown. He is a regulated adviser with Better Retirement and has many years' experience of advising clients about all aspects of pension options at retirement. He is passionate about helping people make the right decisions about their pensions and retirement income. Billy has been involved with retirement options for nearly 30 years, advising clients on all aspects of annuities and retirement income options. In 1992 he helped establish Annuity Direct and then in 1997 he set up William Burrows Annuities. A year later he joined Prudential Annuities as their Marketing Director for annuities. In 2001 he returned to running William Burrows Annuities and in 2010 became part of Better Retirement Group, enabling him to offer the highest quality of services to all approaching retirement. He is frequently quoted in the national press, appears on radio, podcasts and videos and I write extensively on retirement options.

Steven Cameron is Aegon UK’s Public Affairs Director, with responsibility for analysing and lobbying on proposed changes from the Government and regulators on pensions, savings, regulation and the provision of advice. He is frequently quoted in trade and consumer media. An actuary by profession, Steven has 35 years’ financial services experience across marketing, pensions and risk. His current areas of interest include defined benefit transfers, pension freedoms and social care funding.

Dale is currently Aviva’s Policy Manager for workplace savings and retirement. Originally from Sunderland he now lives in Bristol with his wife and two boys. Dale’s worked in workplace pensions in a variety of roles over the past 30 years, providing him with insight from a range of stakeholder viewpoints. His current role sees him regularly engage decision makers across the workplace savings and retirement market as well as providing the opportunity to share insights through regular thought leadership output.

Chris Curry was recently appointed on a part-time basis as Principal of the Pensions Dashboards Industry Delivery Group at the Money and Pensions Service. Pensions Dashboards will ensure people throughout the UK have easy access to key information about what pensions they have, who manages them and what they are worth, revolutionising how people engage with their pensions throughout their lives. Chris also brings valuable expertise and insight gained in his other role as the Director of the Pensions Policy Institute (where he will continue to work part-time). Chris has worked on important projects such as the DWP Auto-Enrolment Review Advisory Group in 2017, where he was co-chair and led on providing advice on the theme of Contributions. At the PPI Chris has authored and presented a number of research reports analysing pensions (including state, private and public sector pensions), pension reforms and other provision for retirement income. Chris started his career as an Economic Adviser at the Department of Social Security (now the Department for Work and Pensions), before joining the ABI as Senior Economist. Chris has a BSc (Hons) in Economics from the University of Warwick, and an MSc in Economics from Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London.

Imogen Garner is a UK and EU financial services law and regulation lawyer based in London. Imogen focusses her practice advising a broad range of clients on the UK and EU financial services regimes. Her clients are based in the EU and globally. As head of our buy-side regulatory practice, she has a particular specialist focus on asset and wealth managers, custodians, depositary banks and other service providers to asset managers and funds. Imogen's asset manager clients employ diverse strategies, from UCITS and traditional long-only managers through to hedge, real estate, private equity and infrastructure funds. She has also worked with a number of asset management industry trade bodies, including the Investment Association, AIMA and the BVCA. Imogen is increasingly recognised as an expert in the Fintech, Regtech and cryptocurrencies regulatory space. She is a regular speaker on these topics and co-leads Norton Rose Fulbright's Fintech regulatory practice in London.

David was appointed Executive Director of Regulatory Policy, Analysis and Advice on 2 July 2018. He 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 led 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.

John Greenwood is editor and publisher of Corporate Adviser and has been writing about workplace pensions for 19 years. A winner of multiple industry awards for his journalism, he was formerly deputy personal finance editor at the Sunday Telegraph, prior to which he was deputy editor of Money Marketing. He also established www.capa-data.com , the defined contribution pension performance data research hub. John is a qualified solicitor and practiced civil law for five years prior to training as a journalist. He is the author of the FT Guide to Pensions and Wealth in Retirement and has written about pensions and personal finance on a freelance basis for several national newspapers.

Charlotte Jackson is Head of Pensions Operations and Customer Protection Strategy at the Money & Pensions Service – new to pensions in 2010 Charlotte always saw her role as checking that the pensions guidance provided by The Pensions Advisory Service did what it said on the tin, provide high quality technical pensions help in a way that the average man or woman on the street could understand and respond too. In 2010 the TPAS guidance team was a team of twelve and on the eve of automatic enrolment we embarked upon an ambitious plan to grow demand and create a narrative about the need to make taking guidance the social norm. Ten years on and now operating under the Money and Pensions Service banner – the service employs more than 120 pensions technical specialists, has faced an exponential growth in demand for pensions guidance and is now looking to how it can best serve consumers going forward. Since April 2019 as part of the reorganisation within the Money and Pensions Service, Charlotte took on the additional responsibility of leading on the development of MaPS Customer Protection Strategy – this builds upon her work with Project Bloom and activity in the pensions space around fraud and mis-selling. Prior to joining The Pensions Advisory Service Charlotte spent nine years working for the Citizens Advice Service.

Nathan is a research analyst working on pensions, savings and investments. He specialises in pensions and retirement across both workplace and individual pension saving. He’s been instrumental in developing analysis of engagement among workplace pension members. He joined Hargreaves Lansdown in 2003 and has worked in several areas of the business including as a financial adviser to individuals, and as a pension and benefits consultant to employers across the UK.

Charles has 30 years of experience working in Financial Services, specialising in investment management and savings, 19 of those years has been as a management consultant with both Big 4 and market leading specialist boutiques providing breadth and depth of the asset management market. Charles’ experience covers developing strategy, back office operational efficiency, outsourcing and fund products. Charles is currently Strategic Policy Director with TISA leading on the development of strategic proposals for government and the regulators. The policy proposals have delivered a range of solutions to encourage consumer saving with a number of these either having already been taken up by Government, being actively piloted or being developed in greater detail with TISA members. Charles was an integral part of the leadership, development and launch of KickStart Money and helped launch the Digital ID project. He has helped develop and author policy proposal on retirement savings, housing and equity release, plus champions the work on financial guidance. He has also led on engagement with government including the FCA, DWP, HMT plus government bodies including MaPS as well as building support for TISA policy with MPs and The Lords.

Shane O'Reilly is a pensions lawyer based in London. Shane has extensive experience of advising on all aspects of pensions law and advises both employers and trustees on the full range of pensions legal issues including: drafting trust documentation; the pensions aspects of corporate transactions; pension scheme investment; and compliance with the pensions regulatory and legislative regime. Shane graduated from Nottingham Law School and the Oxford Institute of Legal Practice and qualified into the Norton Rose Fulbright pensions team in 2006. Shane has also studied German Law at the Friedrich Alexander Universität of Erlangen/Nürnberg receiving an LL.M in 2003 and speaks German fluently. Shane was quoted in Legal 500 2020 as ‘very switched on and technically knowledgeable, but wears his learning lightly - he is effortlessly reassuring to clients’.

Will is the executive director of NEST Insight. He has nearly 15 years of experience working in strategy, public policy and research relating to personal finance and pensions, including time working for the UK government on financial inclusion and the design and implementation of their landmark automatic enrolment programme. In 2008 he joined NEST, shortly after it was formed, and joined the executive team in 2010 as strategy director. In 2016 he oversaw the launch of the NEST Insight Unit and since 2018 has been focused on it full time. Outside of NEST he’s a member of the research committee of the International Centre for Pensions Management.

Margaret Snowdon OBE is a pensions professional and experienced non-executive director. She is a Non-executive Director of the Pensions Regulator and a non-executive member of the Phoenix Group With Profits Committees as well as a Non-executive Director of XPS Group. She also serves on the Advisory Board of Moneyhub Financial Technology Limited. Margaret previously held partner and director level positions with leading employee benefit consultancies. Among her many voluntary roles within the pensions industry, Margaret is Chair of the Pension Scams Industry Group and was Chair of the Pensions Administration Standards Association until the end of 2018 when she became their first Honorary President. She is part of the Taskforce that wrote the PFS Gold Standard Code for financial advisers and led on the PASA DB Transfers Guide. Margaret was appointed an OBE in 2010 and has received many awards for her contribution to Pensions.

Andrew is Proposition Director at EValue, having joined in 2003 to help create technological solutions which help consumers make the right financial decisions. Recently he has been leading a team who help to digitally transform advice, guidance and customer engagement businesses. For example, EValue’s ground breaking digital advice solution has helped clients create highly efficient advice processes, whilst also creating a modern experience for customers. Previously an actuarial consultant at PWC and Barnes & Sherwood, Andrew has over 20 years of financial services experience covering business analysis, testing, project management and sales. He has delivered FinTech projects for banks, building societies, product providers, asset managers and adviser firms. Andrew is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries and is certified in Financial Planning through the Chartered Insurance Institute, as well as holding a Diploma in Management from Reading University.