National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) Corporation chief executive Tim Jones is to stand down at the end of the year after eight years in charge of the auto-enrolment vehicle.

Jones was appointed in October 2007 as head of the Personal Accounts Delivery Authority (PADA), the government body charged with delivering NEST – an auto-enrolment master trust with a public service obligation to accept all employers.

PADA was renamed NEST in the build-up to auto-enrolment, and its only chief executive will now leave to develop a digital financial product in a throwback to his career prior to joining the organisation.

Jones said the development of the digital product had been an ambition and that he hoped his long notice period demonstrated his commitment to the master trust’s success.

Before joining NEST, Jones was head of retail banking at NatWest and chief executive of Modex, Purseus and Simpay – banking and mobile payment financial software firms.

As chief executive, he was key in delivering the trust that opened its doors to new members as auto-enrolment began in October 2012.

NEST now has close to 2m members with more than £330m (€446m) in assets.

The organisation said it was commencing its recruitment drive for a successor immediately and hoped to have someone in place by the time Jones stepped down.

Otto Thoresen, the recently appointed chairman at NEST, praised Jones for his “fantastic” work in leading the body.

“He has successfully taken NEST from the early stages of development through to the first key stages of delivery and established NEST as an integral part of auto-enrolment in the process,” he said.

Thoresen was appointed chair of the trust after Lawrence Churchill stepped down earlier this month after five years in the role, overseeing the launch of auto-enrolment alongside Jones.

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