Melanie brings a diverse wealth of experience from across the pensions industry addressing both statutory and non-statutory actuarial and non-actuarial aspects of UK pension provision.

As a qualified actuary she worked for global consulting firms including Towers Perrin (now Willis Towers Watson) before becoming a professional trustee in 2009.

Melanie’s focus has always been primarily defined benefit over defined contribution, albeit many of her clients have both benefit strategies. Her strong project management skills, pragmatic “can do” attitude combined with her technical appreciation of the actuarial science enable her to support fellow trustees and their sponsors in arriving at well-constructed, collaborative funding solutions. As her clients move towards closure and wind-up Melanie works with advisers to actively explore and challenge the constantly evolving opportunities and solution in liability management, risk reduction, potential consolidation and ultimate buy out.

She balances her works with some of the UK’s largest pension schemes, alongside her desire to support charities and the not-for-profit sector.

Always conscious that, in her role as a professional trustee, the sharing of her experience and mentoring of colleagues and fellow trustees is paramount in striving to achieve the best outcome for members and their sponsors. Melanie is a well-known and highly respected industry figure having been an active participant on the in-house Professional Standard Committee, and currently sits on The Pension Regulator’s Diversity & Inclusion Working Group and is Chair of the Winmark Pension Chair Network.

Paul brings has over 16 years’ experience as a trustee (including 10 years as an independent), having served on a variety of schemes from £50mn in assets to £3.5bn, across defined benefit, defined contribution, and hybrid structures. Paul has also chaired at both Trustee and Committee level.

Prior to his external trustee work, Paul spent 30 years in risk and capital markets in London and New York. He began in capital markets and derivatives at J.P. Morgan, and subsequently spent 17 years at Credit Suisse, working as a Managing Director in fixed income and derivatives, and then later in alternative investments.

Paul has a detailed knowledge of Solvency II (from a principal perspective) and the risk implications and considerations for any client considering any type of risk transfer exercise. Paul holds an M.A. in Natural Sciences from St John’s College, Cambridge.

Peter works with a range of UK defined benefit pension schemes on investment strategy. He helps trustees devise strategies consistent with their investment beliefs and objectives, and is experienced in designing growth asset portfolios and liability matching strategies for clients. He has substantial liability side experience having started his Barnett Waddingham career in the firm’s actuarial practice.

More recently, Peter has spent considerable time researching the fiduciary management market and helped develop the firm’s fiduciary management oversight and evaluation service (FM Evaluate). He has practical experience of fiduciary manager selection exercises and ongoing performance monitoring.

He helps trustee boards set investment governance frameworks appropriate for their individual schemes and is a strong believer that an independent advisory function is important in all cases.