UPDATED Independent governance committees: A list of who is sitting on which IGCs

As of 6 April 2015 all contract-based pension providers have had to have an independent governance committees (IGC) in place to oversee their arrangements.

These committees are charged with representing the interests of members in contract-based schemes and have been set up by a number of providers.

They are made up of an independent chairman, and at least four other members, at least half of whom must be independent of the company.

Below is the full list of IGC members.

This was partially updated on 5 October 2020 but is currently being overhauled. A new version of this page should appear shortly. Please email [email protected] with any amendments.

 

Aegon UK

The Aegon UK IGC's chair's report for 2019/2020 has now been published and can be viewed here.

Chairman: Ian Pittaway (I) is the senior partner at Sackers and also chairs its independent trustee company as well as being chairman of trustees or independent trustee for a number of pension schemes. He is a former chairman of the Association of Professional Pension Trustees (APPT) and a former chairman and secretary of the Association of Pension Lawyers (APL).

Alison Bostock (I) is a client director at PTL, a firm she joined as a full-time professional trustee in 2015 after a 25 year career in pensions consultancy as an actuary. Bostock acts as trustee to a number of DB and DC pension schemes, and is a member of PTL's Governance Advisory Arrangement which acts as an IGC to assess value for money for the workplace pension schemes of a large number of smaller providers.

Helen Parker (I) has 30 years' experience working on consumer issues and was a member of the senior leadership team of Which?, Europe's largest independent consumer organisation, for more than a decade. Parker now has a number of non-executive roles with a focus on consumer engagement and protection and is a non-executive director of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme and is also a non-executive committee member of Healthwatch England, the independent national champion for people who use health and social care services.

 

Aviva

Chairman: Colin Richardson represents PTL and has many years of experience in trustee and governance roles. He sits on governance committees for contract based workplace pension and a number of master trust boards, including the Aviva Master Trust, where he is also the chair.

Robert Talbut served as executive director and chief investment officer for Royal London for 10 years between 2004 and 2014. He has over 30 years' experience and has represented the industry with regulators and policymakers on topics such as market structure, corporate governance and company engagement, and, until recently, chaired the investment committee for the Association of British Insurers and the asset management committee of the Investment Association.

Marcia Campbell is an independent non-executive director with over 25 years' experience in the financial services industry, encompassing strategy, IT, operations and international development. She is currently on the board of Canada Life, Sainsbury's Bank; CNP Assurances, (France's leading life assurer), and Murray International Trust, a FTSE 250 investment trust. The main part of her executive career was with Standard Life, where she was latterly a member of the group's executive committee responsible for group operations and chief executive of its Asia Pacific business.

Gurmukh Hayre is a professional independent trustee and governance adviser. He has been involved in pensions for over 35 years, having worked for two pensions providers and in KPMG's pensions practice for 28 years. He served as a KPMG pensions partner from 2000 to 2016, leading the firm's DC pension practice for over 10 years, advising employers/trustees on all aspects of pension scheme design, governance, communication and investment. He is an associate of the Chartered Insurance Institute and has been an FCA authorised adviser for over 30 years.

Ian Baines is an experienced pension professional who has helped manage a number of workplace pensions for several large UK employers. He is currently head of pensions at Nationwide Building Society where his team won team of the year at Nationwide's annual awards for their work in promoting employee pension savings. U

 

BlackRock

Chairman: Allan Whalley is an independent trustee.

Colin Richardson works at Pitmans Trustees which he joined as a client director in March 2014. Previously he spent 25 years in pensions and actuarial consultancy. He is formerly a director at KPMG and a partner at Barnett Waddingham with subsequent senior positions at JLT and Buck Consultants.

Claire Altman has worked with Capital Cranfield Trustees since 2009. She is a practising pensions lawyer having joined Capital Cranfield's team from Sackers where she had been a partner.

Paul Bucksey is BlackRock's head of UK DC business. Previously he worked at Friends Life, Fidelity International and PwC.

Adrian Lawrence is chief executive of BlackRock Life.

 

Fidelity Worldwide Investment

Chairwoman: Kim Nash is client director of Pitmans Trustees. Previously she spent five years with Towers Watson as a benefit consultant. During her time at Towers Watson she carried out a wide range of work for both corporate and trustee clients, including actuarial valuations, accounting, benefit design and liability management.

Rachel Brougham is a trustee executive at BESTrustees and a defined contribution specialist. Brougham she is a qualified actuary with more than 25 years working in the industry. She has experience advising defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) trustee boards and governance committees of contract-based DC arrangements.

David Felder works for Law Debenture on the trustee boards of a number of DB and DC schemes. He chairs several of these and several of their investment and audit committees.

Paul Mason is chief administration officer at Fidelity.

Julian Webb is head of DC and workplace savings at Fidelity.

 

Friends Life

See Aviva above. As of the 17 June 2016, the IGCs of Friends Life and Aviva merged to create one IGC which oversees the combined business.

 

Hargreaves Lansdown

Chairman: Richard Butcher (I) is managing director of PTL. He is also chair of the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association and has over 30 years' experience in pension governance. Richard is driven to help deliver value for money and great outcomes for savers.

Rita Bajaj (I) is a financial services consultant with over 25 years' broad industry experience. She has held senior investment positions at global and UK asset managers, such as Royal London and Invesco Perpetual. She also served as EMEA chief administrative officer at State Street and is a former Financial Conduct Authority regulator. Rita is passionate about improving retirement outcomes and value for money for members, including sustainable investing and ESG considerations. She is also a chartered financial analyst (CFA).

Helen Carey (I) is Compliance & Operations Director at AV Trinity. She has over 20 years' experience working in a variety of roles in the pensions industry, including workplace pensions. This includes supporting employers when making important decisions for their members and directly advising scheme members pre and post retirement. Helen is passionate about good member outcomes and financial education, having played an active role in improving financial understanding in schools and in the workplace. Helen is a chartered financial adviser and a fellow of the Personal Finance Society.

Ian Costain (I) has been an independent consultant for over 10 years. During this time he has had a particular focus on pension policy and has done advisory assignments at both the Financial Conduct Authority and The Pensions Regulator. Ian's career is grounded on the commercial side of the pensions industry with extensive experience of product development and proposition management. Ian's thinking begins and ends with the customer but, at the same time, he believes that efficient well-managed companies should be allowed to make a profit. Ian is an actuary by profession.

Mark Walter (HL Employee Member) joined Hargreaves Lansdown in 2010. He is responsible for managing HL's relationships with the fund management companies available through the HL platform. He has extensive experience of HL's operational, commercial, and client-facing functions, enabling him to bring a rounded view to assessing value for money within workplace pensions and investment pathways, as well as how ESG is integrated into investing. Mark is passionate about expanding access to financial services. Mark holds the diploma in regulated financial planning. U

 

Legal and General

The Legal & General IGC's chair's report for 2019/2020 has now been published and can be viewed here.

Chairman: Dermot Courtier has a wealth of experience in the pensions sector. As well as being the chair of both L&G's IGC and master trust, he's also head of group pensions at Kingfisher and secretary to Kingfisher Pension Trustee Limited. His experience includes senior pension roles at Hachette Livre Group, Towers Perrin HR Services (now Willis Towers Watson) and Royal Mail Group. He's also a past member of the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association DC Council. (Appointed March 2017)

Rachel Brougham is a trustee executive at BESTrustees. Rachel qualified as an actuary and has worked in the pensions industry since 1988, largely at Mercer. Her experience includes advising both DB and DC trustee boards, and the governance committees of various contract-based DC arrangements. Since she joined BESTrustees in 2014, Rachel has held appointments on two master trust boards and two independent governance committees and has had a particular focus on member engagement. She also works with a number of DB schemes.

Mark Ashworth chairs the LawDeb Pension Trustees practice, part of The Law Debenture Corporation. Ashworth has chaired DC committee for several large DC schemes and the governance committee of a large contract-based scheme; scheme governance and operational issues are amongst his other key areas of expertise.  He currently chairs and serves on five other trustee boards of major UK pension schemes and chairs the governance committee of another. (Appointed April 2020)

Daniel Godfrey studied economics at The University of Manchester and went on to become marketing director of Robert Fleming (now JP Morgan Asset Management). Since then he has worked in various senior positions including director general of The Association of Investment Companies and was chief executive of the Investment Association between 2012 and 2015. He is currently a non-executive director of Digital Moneybox, a fintech start-up. Among other things he's also a senior adviser to Federated Hermes International and a consultant to the Institute for Economics & Peace.

Joanne Segars holds a number of non-executive, trustee and consultancy roles and is also chair of Now Pensions, one of the UK's largest auto enrolment pension providers, and LGPS Central, the asset manager for nine Midlands-based local authority pension funds. She is also a director of the Pensions Policy Institute. Segars has held many other high profile roles during her career including board memberships of the Environment Agency, PensionsEurope and the Pensions Infrastructure Platform and was chief executive of the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association for 10 years. She was awarded an OBE for services to pensions in the 2003 Queen's Birthday Honours. (Appointed January 2019)

Ali Toutounchi has over 30 years of experience in investments. He was formerly managing director of Legal & General Investment Management's (LGIM) global index funds, overseeing the management of over £275bn of assets on behalf of pension funds, institutional and retail investors. He joined L&G in 1995 from NatWest Securities and has also held senior roles at UBS Asset Management and Wood Mackenzie Stockbrokers. U

 

Phoenix Group

The Phoenix Group IGC's chair's report for 2019/2020 has now been published and can be viewed here.

Pheonix Group bought Standard Life Assurance in 2018. As a result of the deal, the firm made some changes to its IGC, harmonising the membership of both IGCs to ensure a consistent governance approach for Standard Life Assurance workplace customers and Phoenix Life workplace customers.

Chairman: David Hare (I) has over 30 years of experience in the UK insurance industry. He qualified as an actuary in 1988 and has held various actuarial, marketing and financial risk management roles in a number of life insurers, including five years as chief UK & European actuary at Standard Life. From 2012 to 2017, he was a partner at Deloitte. He was president of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) from June 2013 to June 2014 and was a member of the independent project board that oversaw the Association of British Insurer's audit of legacy pension schemes identified by the OFT in 2013 as being at risk of being poor value for money. (Appointed 2015)

Ingrid Kirby (I) is an independent professional trustee and investment specialist with Capital Cranfield Trustees. She has 30 years' experience of pension fund investment, including 25 years working at Hermes Investment Management for the BT Pension Scheme and other third-party clients. She now has a portfolio of trustee roles, acting as sole trustee, chair of trustees, and co-trustee across a range of schemes. (Appointed April 2019)

Sheila Gunn (I) is an experienced independent non-executive director. Sheila left private legal practice in 2009 to pursue a management career in industry and undertake non-executive appointments. Current roles include being vice-chair of the Wheatley Group and chair of Wheatley Solutions. Her other non-executive appointments include the Accounts Commission, Scottish Building Society, Council of the Chartered Banker Institute and Lowther Homes. (Appointed 2015)

Mike Christophers (I) has worked in the insurance industry with an involvement in pensions for over 40 years, both with insurance companies and employee benefit consultancies. He was, until recently, chair of Mobius Life and a non-executive director of Forester Life. He was a partner of KPMG and led the development of its insurance consulting practice. Mike also served, until recently, on the boards of Lloyds Bank's insurance businesses, including Scottish Widows. (Appointed 2017)

Michael Craig joined Standard Life as a trainee actuary in 1986 and has held a number of management positions during his career. Prior to his retirement in July 2019, he was the business sponsor for the pensions transformation programme, a director of Standard Life Trustee Company, and also the trustee chair of the ABI staff pension scheme. In addition to his IGC role, Craig is the independent chair of the charity, Royal Blind. (Appointed April 2019)

Mike Pennell is a qualified actuary who has been with the Phoenix Group for almost 30 years, having originally joined Britannic Assurance. His current role is focused on strategy and planning within the life companies of the group and supporting various projects. (Appointed 2015) U

 

Prudential

Chairman: Bruce Rigby (I)

Pat Healy (I)

John Nestor (I)

Mary Kerrigan (I)

Jennifer Owens

Michael Payne

 

Royal London

Chairman: Peter Dorward has solid experience both in life insurance and institutional investments, having worked across a broad range of disciplines, including business leadership. He is now Managing Director of IC Select, a company specialising in the evaluation of providers to UK pension funds. He is also chairman of the board of trustees at the Citizens Advice Bureau and a non-executive director at the Scottish Borders Consortium.

David Gulland (I) has a broad range of experience across the UK life insurance sector, with 25 years' experience as an actuarial consultant, followed by senior executive roles within the life insurance industry - including managing rirector of RGA UK and chief executive of Marine & General Mutual. He is currently a director of PG Mutual and a member of the compliance committee of the Funeral Planning Authority.

Myles Edwards (I) is a pension planholder, and therefore a member, of Royal London. Although this was a primary reason why he was appointed to the IGC, Myles also brings significant experience and expertise built up during his 28 years working in financial services. He has also been executive director at Age UK Enterprises and Foresters Friendly Society for over 12 years responsible for product design, marketing and communications.

Paul Gallagher is life and pensions risk director at Royal London and has over 30 years' experience within the Financial Services industry and over 15 years' experience in Life, Pensions and Asset Management Companies. He has a broad range of experience in various functions including operations, finance and IT and has specialised in risk, compliance and audit for the last 20 years. Previous companies he has worked for include Aegon, Capita, Resolution and RBS Insurance.

Cat Read is chief operating officer at Royal London Asset Management and has 18 years' experience in financial services. She was appointed to the board of Royal London Asset Management (RLAM) in January 2018, having joined the RLAM Executive as the chief operating officer. She was previously the Royal London group audit director for five years. She is a chartered accountant and joined Royal London from PriceWaterhouseCoopers where she was a director within its insurance and asset management risk assurance services practice. U

 

Scottish Widows

The Scottish Widows IGC's chair's report for 2019/2020 has now been published and can be viewed here.

Chairman: Mark Stewart (I) has developed extensive experience of the UK pensions market, over a 28 year career, primarily with the firm now known as Willis Towers Watson. He has a strong understanding of the developing regulatory agenda on workplace savings and has extensive experience of advising a wide range of pension scheme clients over the course of his career.

Ciaran Barr (I) is an experienced investment director, strategist and economist in financial markets, joined the Scottish Widows IGC in April 2019. He has over 25 years' experience in financial services gained as a senior economist at the Bank of England as well as chief UK economist and senior international economist at Deutsche Bank. More recently, he was closely involved with the establishment of the in-house investment architecture and arrangements for the Railways Pension Scheme, a complex UK pension fund. He has deep experience of investing across multiple asset classes, with different client requirements and has, since March 2018, also been a board member of the Railway Benefit Fund charity.

David Butcher

Jackie Leiper is distribution director for Scottish Widows, a role to which she was appointed in January 2018 after a period as protection director. Prior to this she held the role of director of corporate pensions relationships. Leiper has over 25 years' experience in financial services, spending a number of years in various operational management positions at Prudential, Scottish Amicable and Capita Life and Pensions, joining Scottish Widows operations in 2010 responsible for service delivery for all Scottish Widows products.

Iain McGowan is head of fund proposition at Lloyds Banking Group, with responsibility for management and governance of the Scottish Widows fund range, including funds available to group pension schemes. McGowan joined Scottish Widows in 1999 and has over 20 years of industry experience. He previously held distribution and proposition roles across the product range, including group pensions. Iain is an actuary by profession.

Clare Salmon

 

Standard Life

The Standard Life IGC's chair's report for 2019/2020 has now been published and can be viewed here.

Standard Life Assurance was bought by Pheonix Group in 2018. As a result of the deal, the firm made some changes to its IGC, harmonising the membership of both IGCs to ensure a consistent governance approach for Standard Life Assurance workplace customers and Phoenix Life workplace customers.

Chairman: David Hare (I) has over 30 years of experience in the UK insurance industry. He qualified as an actuary in 1988 and has held various actuarial, marketing and financial risk management roles in a number of life insurers, including five years as chief UK & European actuary at Standard Life. From 2012 to 2017, he was a partner at Deloitte. He was president of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) from June 2013 to June 2014 and was a member of the independent project board that oversaw the Association of British Insurer's audit of legacy pension schemes identified by the OFT in 2013 as being at risk of being poor value for money. (Appointed April 2019)

Ingrid Kirby (I) is an independent professional trustee and investment specialist with Capital Cranfield Trustees. She has 30 years' experience of pension fund investment, including 25 years working at Hermes Investment Management for the BT Pension Scheme and other third-party clients. She now has a portfolio of trustee roles, acting as sole trustee, chair of trustees, and co-trustee across a range of schemes. (Appointed 2015)

Sheila Gunn (I) is an experienced independent non-executive director. Sheila left private legal practice in 2009 to pursue a management career in industry and undertake non-executive appointments. Current roles include being vice-chair of the Wheatley Group and chair of Wheatley Solutions. Her other non-executive appointments include the Accounts Commission, Scottish Building Society, Council of the Chartered Banker Institute and Lowther Homes. (Appointed April 2019)

Mike Christophers (I) has worked in the insurance industry with an involvement in pensions for over 40 years, both with insurance companies and employee benefit consultancies. He was, until recently, chair of Mobius Life and a non-executive director of Forester Life. He was a partner of KPMG and led the development of its insurance consulting practice. Mike also served, until recently, on the boards of Lloyds Bank's insurance businesses, including Scottish Widows. (Appointed April 2019)

Michael Craig joined Standard Life as a trainee actuary in 1986 and has held a number of management positions during his career. Prior to his retirement in July 2019, he was the business sponsor for the pensions transformation programme, a director of Standard Life Trustee Company, and also the trustee chair of the ABI staff pension scheme. In addition to his IGC role, Craig is the independent chair of the charity, Royal Blind. (Appointed 2015)

Mike Pennell is a qualified actuary who has been with the Phoenix Group for almost 30 years, having originally joined Britannic Assurance. His current role is focused on strategy and planning within the life companies of the group and supporting various projects. (Appointed April 2019) U

 

Vanguard

Chairman: Lawrence Churchill CBE brings more than 40 years' experience in financial services. Notably, Lawrence was the founding chairman of the Pensions Protection Fund and advised on the passage of the Pensions Act 2004 through parliament, which established both the Pensions Protection Fund (PPF) and the Pensions Regulator. He is also chairman of Clara Pensions and the Pensions Policy Institute.

Dominic Lindley (I) is an independent consultant with 15 years' experience in consumer protection, pension and financial services issue. He has worked for Which? and the Treasury Select Committee. He has advised the open banking implementation entity and is a member of the Actuarial Council and the MAPS pensions dashboards programme steering group.

Anna Eagles (I) is an experienced professional pension trustee with a long career in pensions and employee benefits. She is a qualified actuary with over 20 years' pensions consulting experience, including her last five years as a senior defined contribution consultant before joining LawDeb, where she is a Director. Eagles is also a trustee on a DC master trust and has worked with her fellow trustees through authorisation and now under TPR's Supervision regime.

Ankul Daga is a senior investment strategist at Vanguard. He co-leads the retirement planning research team globally. He has over 15 years of experience in the financial industry across trading, advisory and research functions. He is a CFA charterholder and a member of the Investment Association's defined contribution committee.

Kate Fulker has more than 25 years' financial services experience in the UK and overseas. She is the head of conduct for Vanguard's European regulatory entities. Prior to this, she was the head of European compliance and senior audit manager for the firm's global internal audit function. Previously she was group money laundering reporting officer for Fidelity International and served as the chair of the Investment Association's financial crime committee. U

 

Virgin

Chairman: Sir David Chapman is currently Chairman of the Virgin Money (2011) Pension Scheme, having previously been Chairman of Northern Rock Pension Scheme and Northern Rock Asset Management Pension Scheme. He is a non - executive director of several companies, including an AIM listed manufacturing company, Zytronic Plc.
In 1995 he was the London Stock Exchange's nominee on a corporate governance committee, the Greenbury Committee on Directors' Remuneration, representing the interests of small shareholders.

Steve Balmont (I) has acted as a professional pension trustee since 2000. As a trustee executive with BESTrustees he is involved with defined benefit and defined contribution pension schemes of various sizes and complexity and has experience in investment, administration, governance and funding. He is a chartered accountant by professional background. He is also involved with various pensions' bodies including the Association of Professional Pension Trustees, the Pensions Research Accountants Group and PLSA South London. He is company secretary at BESTrustees and has also had a long association on the Board of London South Bank University and, more recently, the subsidiary Lambeth College.

Dianne Day (I) is a professional trustee with Independent Trustee Services Limited. She has a wealth of experience in investment, governance and trusteeship in the UK and Australia. She has held senior executive roles with investment firms, including Board accountability for substantial investment portfolios and pension funds. She has been a pension trustee since 2007 and has experience serving on both defined benefit and defined contribution schemes. She is particularly interested in effective member communications and engagement strategies.

Mark Bowers is an experienced qualified accountant with over 20 years of experience working in practice and financial services. Mark completed his accountancy training at Ernst & Young, working in external audit with a range of both corporate and pension clients, and is now a fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (FCCA). Mark joined Northern Rock plc in 2009 as an assistant director initially responsible for monitoring the operational cost base. In his current role with Virgin Money, Mark is responsible for Strategic Projects within the finance function, ensuring effective delivery and implementation. This has provided significant experience of large scale complex change projects including loan portfolio migration, new business product build and regulatory compliance projects. Mark previously worked for Co-Operative Financial Services as a strategy & change finance business partner. U

 

Zurich

The Zurich IGC's chair's report for 2019/2020 has now been published and can be viewed here.

Chairwoman: Anna Bradley is a long-standing consumer advocate. She worked at Which? for many years, and is a former chief executive of The National Consumer Council. Bradley also chairs a number of other regulatory and consumer oversight bodies in other sectors including in rail, water and payments.

Mark Thompson was formerly the chief investment officer of the HSBC Bank UK Pension Scheme, where he led on both the DB and DC investment strategies for over eight years. Prior to that Mark held a number of senior roles at Prudential/M&G Investments and was a trustee of Prudential's UK pension scheme.

Laurie Edmans CBE was a founder board member of NEST, of the Pensions Regulator and of the Money Advice Service. He chairs the defined contribution pension plan for Reach, the business formerly known as Trinity Mirror.

Robert Laslett CBE is a previous director at the Office of Fair Trading and the Department for Work and Pensions, where he was also chief economist for pensions. Robert is also a member of the Civil Aviation Authority Consumer Panel.

Anita Fernqvist is presently chief data officer for Zurich Insurance in the UK, with over 14 years of experience in the insurance industry. She brings extensive experience of leading and delivering large scale operational transformation programmes in addition to running and optimising operational disciplines such as business change, IT, robotics and continuous Improvement with a view to driving better customer value through operational excellence. U