Archives: Ambassadors

Mark is founder and director of Zephyre, a regulatory strategy advisory firm. Zephyre is currently an expert adviser/witness on multiple complex competition and regulatory cases in financial services and technology.

 

Mark is also a policy adviser to Which? (the UK consumer representative body), an Associate Faculty member at Imperial College Business School, and has been a longstanding Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Committee.

 

Mark was previously an Executive Director at the Payment Systems Regulator, responsible for regulatory policy & strategy, and Head of Economic Regulation/chief economist at Three/CK Hutchison, the largest foreign investor in the UK, in multiple industries. Mark also helped to create Frontier Economics, Europe’s largest economic consultancy, establishing Frontier’s financial services practice.

Ruston has over 30 years UK and international experience in the pension fund and investment industry.

 

Ruston is the Chairman of the Tesco Pension Fund Trustee Board, the Tesco DC Governance Committee and Tesco Pension Investment Limited (FCA approved investment business managing £14bn of Tesco’s UK DB assets), Chair of PTL and Chair of the Money Advice Service’s Financial Capability Strategy Workplace Steering Group.

 

He’s also a non executive director of JP Morgan Asset Management International Ltd, a non executive director of Smart Pension (Chair of their International Advisory Board), Director of Standard Life’s Master Trust Company, a Governor of the Pensions Policy Institute and the Chair of GroceryAid (charity for the grocery industry).

 

He was a Co Chair of the Government’s Advisory Board, leading on Engagement, of the 2017 Automatic Enrolment Review. Ruston is a former Chair and Non Exec Director of the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association, former Trustee Director of People’s Pension and the former Group Director of Pensions and Insurable Risk at Tesco.

Sunil is an Advisory Board member and Special Adviser to the Association of Professional Fund Investors (APFI).

 

Sunil has 32 years’ experience in the asset management sector and is regarded as a UK leader on the subject of investment costs and charges and the impact of regulation thereon.

 

Sunil is passionate about cost transparency and seeks better social and financial outcomes for consumers of financial services. An asset management subject matter expert with 32 years’ experience in the asset management sector here in the UK, and abroad.

 

Sunil has spent the last 17 years or so consulting at numerous asset management firms and was an Associate Principle, Investment Costs & Charges, at Grant Thornton.

Jon qualified as a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries (as it was) in 1977, since when most of his career has been in different aspects of DB pensions.

 

Having formerly worked at two large private sector consultancies for 16 years, he was employed by Government Actuary’s Department from January 1990 until May 2018.

 

Professionally, he was a member of the Pension Fund Valuations & Market Values Working Party (which reported in October 1999) and the Valuation Rates of Interest Working Party (which was terminated before work was completed), serving on Pensions CPD Committee from 2010 until 2016 and is currently a member of the SIAS Committee.

 

His focus is trying to explain why the long-term future is not at all well addressed by short-term measurements, a battle still being fought.

David is a Lead on the Market Integrity Team (MIT) of the Transparency Taskforce. He has project managed the MIT’s 18 month project on Codes of Conduct & Codes of Ethics in Financial Services which has resulted in their White Paper released in July 2018.

 

With a background in pensions & benefits David spent over twenty years with Marsh and Mercer managing the SW region of Mercer Employee Benefits, and latterly in a proposition development and project & change management role.

 

Since 2011 David has worked with leading banks, insurance companies and national IFA firms developing propositions that have focused on aspects of governance and bringing change to the delivery of financial services. Projects managed have included developing and bringing to market a new workplace pension offering for SME clients of Mercer; building a product governance framework for a leading insurance company; defining an Operational Risk Management model for a national IFA firm; developing a governance proposition for Auto Enrolment clients of Barclays Corporate & Employer Solutions; developing a DB to DC proposition for a leading IFA firm; and developing a benefit package to sit alongside Auto Enrolment.

 

David also acted as Co-Chair of the Friends of Auto Enrolment Governance Task Force, playing a large part in the drafting of their Guide to AE.

William Price is CEO of D3P Global, a company dedicated to building better pension systems globally.

 

He is an international pension expert who has worked for the World Bank – for whom he still works as a consultant – UK Treasury, UK Pension Regulator and in collaboration with the OECD and International Organization of Pension Supervisors (IOPS).

 

He co-created the Outcomes Based Assessments (OBA) and Outcomes and Risk Based Supervision (ORBS) models for pensions and has published extensively including the recent book “Saving the Next Billion from Old Age Poverty”.

 

He is also a Program Leader and Advisory Board member for Insurance and Pensions at the Toronto Centre for Global Leadership in Financial Supervision and an Ambassador for the Transparency Taskforce.

 

He gained his first degree from Oxford University and has a Masters in Economics from University College London.

James Daley has been a consumer campaigner and financial journalist for more than 18 years. Before launching Fairer Finance, he worked for the consumer group, Which?, where he campaigned for a better deal for customers of banks and insurers in the wake of the financial crisis.

 

James is frequently interviewed on national television and radio, and has regularly appeared on shows such as Watchdog, Rip-off Britain, Dispatches and Supershoppers.

 

Before working at Which?, James spent 10 years as a business and finance newspaper journalist, latterly as the The Independent’s personal finance editor and cycling columnist.

 

He lives with his wife and two children in Tooting, where he is also a local councillor.

Andrew Parry is Head of Sustainable Investing and a member of the Hermes Strategy Group. He joined the firm in 2009, initially as Chief Executive and Co-Head of Investment for Hermes Sourcecap, now Hermes European Equities, becoming Head of Equities in 2014 and taking on responsibility for developing Impact investing in August of 2016. In September of 2017 he became Head of Sustainable Investing to reflect the commitment of Hermes to building on their success in responsible investing.

 

In 2006, Andrew jointly founded Sourcecap with the aim of building a best-in-class investment boutique focused on excellence in European equity management.

 

Prior to this, Andrew established Pembroke Capital Management in 2003 and successfully launched the Magenta Fund, a global equity non-directional fund.

 

Before that, Andrew worked at Northern Trust Global Investments (Europe) Ltd as Chief Investment Officer of International Equities and was responsible for the management of global, international and regional portfolios.

 

He has also held a variety of senior investment roles, including Head of International Equities at Julius Baer Investments, Chief Investment Officer at Lazard Brothers Asset Management, and Head of UK Equities at Baring Asset Management.

 

Andrew holds an MA in Mathematics from the University of St Andrews. Andrew is Co-Chair of the UNEP Financial Initiative Positive Impact Steering Group and a member of the Investment Committee of the Trafalgar House Pension Trust.

 

He was formerly an independent investment advisor to the Investment Sub-Committee of the Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme and a non-equity director of Aerion Fund Managers.

Mike is consulting director, and sole-proprietor of the lang cat Isle of Wight office.

 

A driver and survivor of platform mergers, migrations and RDR he held a number of senior roles at Skandia and Old Mutual Wealth, most recently Head of Platform Marketing.

 

His favourite platform is platform 4 at Southampton.

The lang cat is a specialist platforms, pensions and investment consultancy.

 

From its Edinburgh base, the lang cat works with platforms, life companies, asset managers and large advisory firms helping them interpret regulation, develop new propositions, turn marketing strategy into action and articulate their services in such a way that people without a financial services degree have a hope of understanding them.

 

Bit by bit it aims to leave the industry just a little better than it found it.

 

The lang cat is also a strategic communications agency, offering PR and communication services to clients across retail investment, protection and fintech. The comms guys have access to the techy guys, and the techy guys are helped by the comms guys to communicate with impact. It’s a good mix.

 

Mark is a prolific writer, contributor to the trade press and international public speaker, even when people ask him not to be.

 

He doesn’t play guitar as much as he’d like and spends more time than is reasonable going to gigs aimed at people considerably younger and more tattooed than him.