Statement backing Bobby's Institute of Actuaries Election

Climate change is with us and calling it an emergency with urgent action needed is an understatement. Since 2015, when I first considered sitting the CFA Certificate in ESG investment while working as an investment consultant, I have been looking at practical ways that pension schemes of all sizes can do their bit to both mitigate the risk of climate change and support solutions to climate change.

Ten years on, and as a professional trustee to pension schemes, I have just founded the Trustee Sustainability Working Group, which I also chair. A comprehensive group of professional and non- professional trustees, with experience on schemes with less than £100k in assets to over £60bn in assets. We have a major challenge on a number of fronts,

1) Keeping climate change on Trustee agendas in 2025 is a major issue. Trustees are having to deal with the new funding code, ESOG, pensions dashboard, mansion house - to name a few items.

2) The policy framework currently expects pension funds to be the drivers of climate change solutions and reporting. We need to change that to recognise that government and policymakers should be tackling climate change - pension funds can make a big difference but only if they spend time on action and not on reporting.

3) Not all pension trustees and/ or advisors think that pension schemes, especially mid and small schemes, can make a big difference - so we need to educate and speak and extend networks.

4) We actually need to be working on solutions!

To that end, the work that I am doing with pension funds and investment managers is also taking me into discussions with professionals from wider fields. In fact, many of the fields that Actuaries work in. And it is clear that Actuaries are doing great work in many of those fields to address all of the items above.

It is now clear to me that if I am elected to council, there is a unique opportunity to leverage both the great work that Actuaries are doing and the work that the Trustee Sustainability Working Group is doing. And at a time when a lot of expertise and innovation is needed to find solutions.

So now a bit more about me.

I started my career as a with-profit Actuary in the early 90's before moving into Investment Consulting in the late 90s. I advised pension schemes for over 25 years before becoming a professional trustee. In that time, I have served on various actuarial committees and also chaired the Investment Committee of the Association of Consulting Actuaries. I am also a regular speaker at conferences. I most recently chaired the second PMI Defined Benefit conference. And finally, I have recently been shortlisted for European Pensions Personality of the Year.