Pensions World

Pensions World keeps you up to date with the latest news of hires and flyers

Administration

Margaret Snowdon, OBE, has been elected as the new chairman of the Pensions Administration Standards Authority (PASA), the independent body dedicated to driving up standards in pensions administration.

Commenting on her appointment Margaret said: “I am very pleased to take on the role as chairman of PASA, particularly at such a crucial time for pensions administration with auto-enrolment just around the corner. My responsibilities will include implementing the new accreditation scheme that will provide schemes and providers alike with a clear set of standards and guidelines.”

Margaret is operations director of Lucida. The PASA board is also newly elected and comprises Debra Super, Pearson; Fergus Clark, Aon Consulting; Jane Murray, Towers Watson; John Broker, ITM; John Simmonds, CEM Benchmarking; Karen MacKenzie, KPMG; Kim Gubler, Kim Gubler Consulting; Mark Adamson, JLT Group; Peter Dyer, Hymans Robertson; Phil Bradish, The Pensions Trust; Sara Cook, Mercer; and Sarah Holdstock, Xafinity Paymaster.

Insurance

AEGON UK has appointed Tommy Young as chief operating officer for its life and pensions business. Tommy is currently responsible for leading the implementation of AEGON’s restructure and costs saving programme, a position he has held since the programme began in June 2010.

Tommy will replace Simon Skinner who becomes CEO of AEGON Ireland.

Law

Nicola Rondel rejoins Hogan Lovells from Jones Day as a senior associate.

Sacker & Partners has promoted Caroline Legg to associate director and Ian D’Costa to associate.

Consultants

Michael Dempsey has been appointed head of Mercer’s investment management business for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and a member of the firm’s EMEA executive team and its global investment management leadership team. For the previous four years Michael has headed up its investment management business in Ireland.

Mercer has also appointed Mark Moorton as UK head of human resources based in London. He joins from Specsavers where he was international HR director from 2009. The firm has also hired Neil Puxley as a partner in its retirement, risk and finance business. Neil will be based in the Edinburgh office.

Dominic McNamara, previously at the Financial Assistance Scheme, has joined the firm’s outsourcing business as a client service manager in its discontinued schemes.

Pi Consulting has appointed Amanda Burden as its business development consultant. Amanda has 25 years of experience and most recently worked at AEGON.

STAR MOVERS

Tesco’s Ruston Smith moves up at NAPF

Ruston Smith has been elected as the next chairman of the Retirement Policy Council of the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF).

Ruston will take over from Joy Moore as chairman of the Retirement Policy Council when her two-year appointment ends at the NAPF annual general meeting in Manchester on 21 October 2011.

Ruston joined Tesco as group pensions director in December 2002. In this role he is accountable for the running of the group’s schemes including the investment of their award winning UK pension scheme’s £5.5bn assets. The UK scheme has the largest number of employed members in the private sector with over 167,000 employed members, and 284,000 members in total.

He is accountable for the strategic development of the pensions policy of Tesco on a global basis.

In May 2007, he also became director of group insurable risk responsible for group insurance and risk financing.

Before joining Tesco, Ruston was a director and company secretary at PZ Cussons. He has an MBA from Manchester and is an Associate of the Pensions Management Institute and a Fellow of the Institute of Management.

Ruston is currently vice chairman of the NAPF Retirement Policy Council.