What was your first full-time job - and do you remember what you were paid at the time?
In 1968 I joined the Co-operative Insurance Society as an actuarial student on an annual salary of £900 (€1,328). I had already done vacation jobs there while studying maths and statistics at St Andrews University. I stayed at the Co-op until 1971, working initially on actuarial sums, for example tables for premiums and surrender values and then as a member of the IT team.
What was the best piece of advice that anyone gave you career-wise and did you take it?
When I was 18 or 19 I read an article on careers in the Scotsman newspaper - I was brought up in the North of Scotland - and it advised being an actuary. It actually suggested that the most lucrative career was dentistry but I didn’t fancy the back problems that went with that job so I went for what it said was the second most lucrative career. I was enjoying maths and statistics at university and it seemed a natural progression.
How did a nice person like you become involved in a pensions career?
It goes with the territory of being an actuary. Working for a small insurer in the late 1970s I foresaw the death of small insurers due to regulatory overload and chose pensions as an escape route becoming pensions manager at AE plc, which later ended up in the Turner & Newall empire. Back in the late 1970s we had just introduced contracting out. It was a complex area and quite interesting to an actuary - we see a challenge in arcane benefit design. But I foresaw there would be lots of interest in defined benefits schemes, and there was as they matured and became bigger relative to, and therefore more important, to the organisation that sponsored them.
What was the most satisfying achievement during your career - and why?
A pension could be one of the biggest assets most couples had after the family home but before 1995 it could not be split on divorce. Socially, it seemed right that one ought to be able to split it.
I was heavily involved in that debate, submitting evidence to the Pensions Management Institute (PMI), taking its ideas onwards in the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) in 1995 and then the Joint Working Group of trade associations involved in pensions to create an industry consensus.
I worked with Labour Party to get it into the Pensions Bill and I was in the box as an adviser on the floor of the House of Lords when Labour defeated a three-line Conservative whip against the amendment. It really was quite amazing because there were just so many people from every walk of life there - sportsmen, business men, the great and the good. It was incredible to see them all there.
And what was the worst moment in your career - and why?
Being made redundant in 1972. I was working for an insurance company that merged with two others so there were too many management people and I was the unlucky one. But one of the other actuaries withdrew and my redundancy was withdrawn after three days.
How would you sell a career in pensions to a prospective newcomer to the industry?
If you are involved in the investment side I think pensions is still a great career to follow. You are acting for the asset owner and you can learn from the best strategists in the world who will come and tell you how to run your pension scheme.
It’s a great exposure and a fantastic opportunity for somebody who wants to learn how the financial world ticks. But I’d be a bit more cautious about a benefits job for anyone aged under 40 because the administration of defined contribution plans or of the rump defined benefit (DB) schemes is quite different and not, in my view, as interesting a job as it was in the heyday of DB schemes.
What would you do differently?
Frankly nothing. I’ve had a great career and changed jobs several times when I was younger. I was involved with Irish Schemes for 20 years and still miss the business contact with Ireland. For one of my longer spells I worked for Rowntree McIntosh, an international chocolate company, with responsibility for pensions
across the world. And then I went into the coal schemes that are just so big, with a vast membership and a vast amount of money that needs to be invested, so I ended up in a great place. I would not change anything I have done on my way through what has been a great career.
Do you have any unfulfilled ambitions?
Only about the current projects I am involved in. I’ll be sad not to complete the current strategic investment review of the coal schemes. It’s really a very exciting time to be involved in pension investments, there are so many new ideas around. People are embracing diversity and diverse strategies, trying to improve the risk/reward ratio. Being in the more derivatives-driven world of investments today is a challenge that I would have loved to have taken on.
Are you retiring or are you recycling yourself into some new role?
I really don’t know. I am interested in recycling but then I am just at the start of the period when to be thinking about it. And I am planning to take a three-month sabbatical in Cape Town before I make up my mind.
Your words of wisdom for those in the pensions industry?
Watch out for government - they’ve not finished trying to make things even more complex despite the pretence of simplification. There is an army of politicians and civil servants who must inevitably add to the amount of regulation that’s around, otherwise they’d talk themselves out of a job.
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