Andrew Reid, Managing Director, is Head of BlackRock's Defined Benefit Relationship Management Team. The RM team is responsible for understanding the objectives of our pension scheme clients and ensuring the firm delivers solutions to enable clients to meet those objectives. Mr. Reid has over three decades of experience working in UK pensions in global markets, asset management and pension consulting. In previous roles, Mr. Reid was Head of Corporate Consulting at Watson Wyatt (now WTW) and has held global leadership roles on a longevity structuring desk at Credit Suisse and a pensions sales desk at Deutsche Bank. He has held non-executive roles as chairman of a pension scheme’s investment committee and on a longevity swap platform. Most recently, Mr. Reid was the UK head of business development at Insight Investment. Mr. Reid is a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. He holds an MA in Mathematics from the University of Oxford.

Andrew Dodd, Interim Head of Supervision, TPR, will provide a high-level overview of the new DB Funding Code, outlining its key principles and what TPR is planning next. The session will explore what the changes mean for those submitting valuations and how TPR will regulate against the new code in a proportionate, risk-based way. The session will conclude with an opportunity to put your questions directly to Andrew.

Ali is a highly experienced scheme actuary with a particular focus on providing trustee advice to large complex clients. Prior to joining Barnett Waddingham, Ali has been scheme actuary to pension schemes with assets ranging from £1bn to £60bn including a number of FTSE 100 pension schemes.
Ali is passionate about making complex issues easy to understand for trustees with all levels of technical experience and expertise to help with engagement and participation of the full Trustee Board. He strives to help trustees to develop clear long-term objectives, with a key focus on the outcomes and benefit security for the membership.

His support helps trustees in establishing effective criteria for all their decision-making and working effectively with their sponsoring employers. He also sits on the PLSA's Defined Benefit Committee, to which he contributes regular subject expertise.

Bobby is Managing Director of HS Trustees and a Professional with over 30 years’ experience in pensions and investments. He is currently Chair of Trustees on the DB Scheme of a London based firm of Lawyers. He is also Chair of the recently launched Trustee Sustainability Working Group. He is a regular speaker on DB, DC and ESG/ Stewardship issues and is looking to assist both the industry and his Pension Schemes develop in these areas. He is also currently an asset owner member of the AIMSE Europe council and past Chair of the ACA Investment Committee.
During his career Bobby has worked with some of the largest and smallest pension schemes in the UK across all areas. He is an actuary by profession and has worked as both an Investment Consultant and a With-Profit Actuary.

Tim is a major shareholder and has a PhD in theoretical statistical physics. He was also a research associate at the University of Cambridge and is recognised as a force in data science, data quality and statistical analysis which is confirmed by the Data IQ top 100. Tim is recognised as one of the most influential individuals in the country.
His knowledge and expertise has resulted in the development of all of MM.’s key range of products.
His responsibilities continue to include the development of all products, manage the delivery team and be responsible for all new client implementation.
In addition, his knowledge of client data and associated issues are second to none and he is a trusted advisor to all our key clients.

Ellie has worked in the pensions industry for more than 30 years.  She is responsible for the strategic direction of the Cheviot Trust and is also a trustee.  An authorised DC Master Trust, Cheviot also runs a DB master trust under the same governance structure.  With a background in the legal sector, Ellie has a strong focus on governance issues.  She is passionate about clear, focussed and accessible communications across the board: from advisers and trustees to employers and members.

Having secured a scholarship at the University of California, John traded it in for a career as a professional footballer with Manchester United.

Unfortunately, injury cut short John’s football career, leading him to seek an equally thrilling and exciting career, similar to that enjoyed in elite football, and naturally John found that working in the Pension & Insurance industry, was just that.

Consequently, John has over 30 years’ experience in Pensions Administration, across both Public and Private Sector, as well as Defined Benefit and Defined Contribution arrangements.

This experience includes over 15 years working with the Pensions Risk Transfer (PRT) market, where he has helped to develop innovative administration solutions, for both established and new PRT providers, across a range of transaction sizes, and including some of the largest PRT transactions completed to date.

Mike Clark is Founder Director of Ario Advisory, a responsible investment advisory firm, working with asset owners, investment managers, regulators, policymakers and others. An actuary, his work has a strong focus on climate change. He is a Visiting Fellow at the Global Systems Institute, University of Exeter. He was one of the authors of the USS/Exeter “No Time To Lose” report which brought narrative climate scenarios to the pensions sector. Through Ario Advisory, Mike is a member of the Advisory Board to Vyzrd, an industry-leading climate intelligence platform. He was Special Adviser to the UK’s parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee for their Green Finance inquiry and continues to engage with Select Committees on climate and other systemic risk issues. He was a NED at Brunel (LGPS), and contributed to building what became GFANZ. As GFANZ pivots, NZAM restructures, and with NZIA failing, there is much rethinking to do in net zero land.

Richard Jones is the Managing Director of Punter Southall Pensions Solutions. He is a qualified actuary with almost 25 years industry experience, including over a decade heading up Punter Southall’s specialist employer consulting division, prior to the sale of all the pension consulting businesses in 2018. His particular specialism is the interaction of employer covenant with funding and investment, helping schemes to understand and navigate to the best long-term outcome for their specific circumstances. He has led over 300 complex pension projects during his career.

Richard is a career pensions professional, starting in 1987.

In 2020 he lead the UK Government’s development of data standards for pensions dashboards (originally published in December 2020). He then went on to support PASA and PLSA, as well as PensionFusion and Moneyhub, on the topic of pensions dashboards.

He is now also the Volunteer Chair of the (Pensions) Dashboard Operators Coalition.

Sam is a principal shareholder of MM. and brings with him a range of data quality, leadership and commercial experience. Sam has worked with some of the world’s largest data and credit reference agencies. At Experian his responsibilities included sales leadership, customer management and business development.
He brings with him a rare skill of understanding customer requirements and provisioning critical solutions which enhance the profitability of clients.
His ambition is to develop the business into a trusted data partner in the financial industry.

Valeria Piani is Head of Stewardship at Phoenix Group. She joined the firm in September 2021 to lead the in-house stewardship team and collaborate with Phoenix’s Asset Management partners to influence ESG performance by investee companies. She has over 17 years of experience in the industry and has held a number of senior positions at different firms. She joined UBS Asset Management in 2017 as Strategic Engagement Lead responsible for the manager’s climate change engagement programme, stewardship reporting and integration research in the industrial sector. Prior to this, Valeria worked for nine years as Associate Director at the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) where she managed a team of 11 members responsible for coordinating investor collaborative engagement activities with companies on a range of ESG issues. When at the PRI, she supported over 30 investors coalitions involving more than 200 asset owners and investment managers. Topics included among others director nomination, gender diversity, emissions reduction and human rights. Her recent publications include reports on engaging on climate change and the added value of stewardship more broadly. Her research on the effectiveness of shareholders’ collaborative engagement activities with companies on ESG issues has been published by the Business & Society Journal and Emerald Group Publishing and was selected by the editors as an Outstanding Author Contribution in the Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence. In addition to being a member of the CA100+ Global Steering Committee, Valeria is also a member of the IIGCC Advisory Group of Corporate Programme and the PRI Advisory Committee of Advance.