Renny Biggins
Head of Retirement, TISA
Renny has been at TISA for 4 years and is the Head of Retirement having previously held the roles of Retirement Policy Manager and 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 Curry
Director, Pensions Policy Institute
Chris Curry is the Director of the Pensions Policy Institute (PPI) with overall responsibility for leading and managing the PPI. Chris originally joined the PPI as Research Director in July 2002 and was responsible for the research programme for eleven years. 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 is experienced in presenting research findings to a wide range of audiences and to the media. In June 2019 Chris was appointed Principal of the Pensions Dashboard Programme at the Money and Pensions Service, on a part-time basis alongside his role at the PPI. Chris was one of the three co-chairs for the 2017 DWP AE Review, and was also a member of the Joint Expert Panel (JEP) that examined the valuation of the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) in 2018 and 2019. 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.
Aimée Denham
Trustee Director, 20-20 Trustees
Aimée joined 20-20 Trustees in July 2019 and is based in the Birmingham office. Aimee’s career has been spent in a number of senior roles with ‘big four’ consultancies KPMG, Deloitte and most recently at PwC where she was Senior Manager for Pensions and Employee Benefits with particular expertise in DC, but also providing advice to a variety of clients across the UK in relation to scheme design, governance and risk management, strategy, communications, scheme closures and provider review and selection. Having held diverse roles she has been able to build a strong knowledge of the pensions market and regulatory landscape and has deep technical expertise.
Caroline Escott
Trustee Director, Standard Life Master Trust
Caroline is an independent trustee at Standard Life Master Trust and has 15 years’ experience of investment, scheme governance and stewardship policy and practice. She currently heads up the global stewardship and corporate governance work for RPMI Railpen, one of the UK’s largest Defined Benefit pension schemes. She previously led on investment, governance and stewardship issues at the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA) and was Head of Public Policy at the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association (UKSIF). She has sat on HM Treasury’s Patient Capital – Pensions Investment Taskforce, led the asset owner work-stream of the government-appointed Growing a Culture of Social Impact Investing Taskforce and also contributes to a number of other industry groups including the Pensions Climate Risk Industry Group (PCRIG). She was recently picked as one of Financial News’ 2020 “Top 25 Rising Stars of Asset Management in Europe”. She was also awarded InvestmentWeek’s “Investment Woman of the Year 2019” for small and medium firms. She holds the CFA UK accredited Investment Management Certificate (IMC) and the PMI’s Certificate in DC Governance.
Imogen Garner
Partner, Norton Rose Fulbright
Imogen Garner is a UK and EU financial services law and regulation lawyer based in London. Imogen focuses 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.
Outside of the asset and wealth management sphere, Imogen's financial institutions clients include significant global banking institutions. Imogen has assisted clients with significant regulatory change projects, as well as their on-going interactions with regulators. She advises regularly on the financial services aspects of corporate transactions and on the regulation of securities offerings and fund-raisings.
As well as advising regulated institutions, Imogen has worked within the regulator. She spent nine months seconded to the General Counsel's Division of the Financial Services Authority (the FSA, as it then was), where she advised the FSA's CIS Policy Team and HM Treasury on the EU's Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive.
Imogen is increasingly recognized as an expert in the Fintech, Regtech and cryptocurrencies regulatory space. She is a regular speaker on these topics and co-leads our Fintech regulatory practice in London.
Riccardo Gasparini
Founder and COO, Collegia
Riccardo Gasparini is the COO and cofounder of Collegia. He oversees operations and manages relationships with financial and technology partners. Riccardo has always been passionate about personal finance, in particular how the combined use of technology and finance can empower savers. An Electronic Engineer by background, he also holds an MBA from Said Business School, University of Oxford.
Jon Greer
Head of Retirement Policy and Pensions Technical, Old Mutual Wealth
Jon is an expert in pensions and long term savings policies. He has an in-depth knowledge of pension taxation for both UK and qualifying recognised overseas pension schemes. With 16 years pensions experience in various pension technical roles, he focuses on the taxation and governance of UK registered pension schemes, as well as qualifying recognised overseas pension schemes.
Robert Holford
Head of Strategy, The Pensions Regulator
Robert Holford is the Head of Strategy at The Pensions Regulator. Robert has been one of the driving forces behind the Regulator’s first corporate strategy and currently also Chair’s its Master Trust Risk Oversight Committee.
Robert joined TPR from the Financial Conduct Authority following a career spent in business intelligence and management consultancy, latterly as Head of Strategic Consulting at Spence Jonson – now part of Broadridge. Here he led the firm's strategic consultancy practice and market intelligence research for UK and European DC markets as well as Retirement Income and Smart Beta markets.
A Cambridge graduate, Robert also holds a MRes in International Political Economy and Global Governance from Birkbeck, University of London.
Lee Hollingworth
Partner, Hymans Robertson
Lee is a Partner with extensive workplace DC expertise and spent over 10 years as Head of our DC Consulting practice, advising employers and trustees. He enjoys developing new solutions that help meet consumer and client needs and has spent the last 24 months deploying these consulting skills to assist providers and asset managers set and implement their DC strategies. Lee actively engages with public pensions policy debate with the ambition of shaping a better outcome for consumers.
Jason Hurwood
Director of Investments, Insurance, Protection and Later Life Lending, Nationwide Building Society
Jason is a Senior Executive with significant experience across distribution, product and operational disciplines within the Financial Services Industry. Currently he is the Director of Investments, Insurance, Protection and Later Life Lending for the Nationwide Building Society. He has full responsibility for leading the development of the growth strategy for these product lines from inception through to delivery; bringing to life member focused propositions that deepen relationships through the most important moments in their lives. In addition he is the Chair of the Financial Planning Investment Committee Prior to this Jason held a number of senior executive roles in his 13 years with Nationwide, these included; Director of Later Life Lending, responsible for the strategic development and delivery of entry to the Equity Release and wider later life lending market. Director of the Mortgage advice team. Director of the Financial Planning team, responsible for delivering significant growth in advisor numbers, advice capability and RDR compliance. In addition, Commercial Director, responsible for executive leadership across transformation, risk, controls, governance and operations for all distribution teams. Prior to joining Nationwide in 2007 Jason spent the previous 20 years in a variety of advice/leadership roles for the Portman Building Society, Royal London and United Friendly Insurance
Stuart Murphy
Head of DC Client Management, Legal & General Investment Management
Stuart leads the DC Workplace client relationship function at Legal and General managing employer and trustee relationships across Mastertrust, own trust and contract based schemes. A key element of Stuart’s responsibility is leading the support to both the Legal and General IGC and Mastertrust Board. As part of the support to the IGC and Mastertrust Stuart chairs both the Mastertrust Scheme Strategist Forum formed as part of Authorisation and the DC Client User Forum, a forum for contract based and own trust schemes.
Shane O'Reilly
Partner, Norton Rose Fulbright
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 investments; and compliance with pensions regulatory and legislative regimes.
Sarah Porretta
Executive Director for Strategy and Insights, MaPS
Sarah Porretta is the Executive Director for Strategy and Insights at the Money and Pensions Service (MaPS). She brings a significant understanding of industry needs and requirements gained over 10 years in financial services, and prior to that 10 years in responsible business roles across various sectors. Sarah joined the Money Advice Service In 2018, where she led on the corporate strategy and the financial capability strategy for the UK at the Money Advice Service (MAS) and then joined MaPS when it was formed in 2019. She is the Executive Director responsible for the UK Strategy for Financial Wellbeing; money, debt and pensions policy; insights, evaluation and innovation.
Prior to joining MAS, Sarah was Head of Financial Inclusion and Education at Lloyds Banking Group. Here she created a group-wide, multi-brand strategy for financial inclusion and education and created and led its Money for Life Programme. During this time, she also chaired UK Finance’s Financial Inclusion and Capability Forum. Prior to this she held senior positions at Cadbury and BAA.
In January 2020 Sarah published the UK Strategy for Financial Wellbeing – the government-backed 10-year strategy with five national goals targeting improved financial education for children and young people; increased savings level; decreased use of credit for everyday living; better debt advice and increased level of confidence for people planning for and in later life. The strategy also has cross cutting lenses focusing on gender, mental health and the role of the workplace in promoting financial wellbeing. Throughout 2020 she led a programme convening 150 high-profile stakeholders across the four nation of the UK to develop delivery plans to reach the national goals.
While she has been at MaPS Sarah joined the Expert Panel for the Insuring Women’s Futures Programme, she currently jointly chairs with UK Finance a cross-financial services working group on financial education, and she sits on the Advisory Board for the OECD’s International Network for Financial Education.
She can be found on Twitter at @sarahporretta & email Sarah.Porretta@maps.org.uk
Anish Rav
Head of Clients, Proposition and Strategy, Atlas Master Trust
Anish is part of the Executive team at Atlas and a Fellow of the Pensions Management Institute, with over 25 years’ experience. He is passionate about creating better outcomes and is leading the innovation and development of Master Trusts, having been involved in them since 2012. He has advised many large trustee and corporate clients on the issues faced by both defined contribution and defined benefit pension schemes.
Tom Selby
Senior Analyst, AJ Bell
Tom Selby is a multi-award-winning former financial journalist, specialising in pensions and retirement issues. He spent almost six years at a leading adviser trade magazine, initially as Pensions Reporter before becoming Head of News in 2014. Tom joined AJ Bell as Senior Analyst in April 2016. He has a degree in Economics from Newcastle University.
Andrew Warwick-Thompson
Professional Trustee, Capital Cranfield
Chris Williams
Head of Wealth Management & Insurance Customer Journeys, HSBC UK
Fiercely passionate about the democratisation of wealth services, Chris, in his role as Head of Wealth Management & Insurance Customer Journeys HSBC UK, is working to change the perception that investing is only for the “wealthy”. Having started his career as a financial adviser, Chris went on to run a national advisory firm, leading them through the Retail Distribution Review (RDR). In 2013 he set up one of the UK’s first ‘Robo Advisers’, playing an integral role in the early digital revolution within the Wealth Management industry. Over the past 5 years, he’s worked for large institutions, most recently HSBC UK, to use his expertise to scale and integrate financial advice and digital propositions. Chris is responsible for delivering integrated wealth propositions via face-to-face, online and remote channels. He believes this integrated approach is vital in ensuring customers’ financial planning and wealth management needs are both met and exceeded through customer-led proposition design.