People moves: Aegon names new CEO

Aegon Asset Management – Shawn Johnson has been appointed as the new chief executive officer of Aegon Asset Management and member of the firm’s executive committee, effective 23 September.

Johnson succeeds Bas NieuweWeme, who has decided to leave to pursue career opportunities outside of Aegon. To enable a smooth transition, NieuweWeme will stay on as an advisor until 1 December.

Johnson brings a wealth of experience to Aegon , having most recently served as CEO of AMP Capital, an international investment manager based in Australia, where he successfully led the company through a period of strategic transformation. During his career he also founded Guidon Global, advising top institutional investors, and had a 15-year tenure at State Street Global Advisors where he chaired the investment committee and played a key role in guiding the firm’s global investment strategies.

Swedish FSA – Emilia Högquist has been appointed as the new head of sustainability at Sweden’s Financial Supervisory Authority (Finansinspektionen, FI). The authority said Högquist had extensive experience of working with sustainable development, with her most recent job having been a managerial role at the Ministry of Climate and Business.

Högquist, who started the new job at FI on 12 August, said financial firms played a central role in sustainability work. “Our cooperation within the EU is important, and the work with the new regulations governing sustainability work in the financial sector in various ways will continue to be a high priority for us,” she said.

Hymans Robertson – Two new hires and a promotion have been made within the firm’s LGPS governance, administration and projects (GAP) team. Con Hargrave and Michael Burton, join the firm as consultants, with Claire McDines being promoted to associate consultant.

Hargrave has 17 years of experience in policy work at the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) where he was a senior policy adviser in the local government pensions team. He has also held key roles at the Local Government Association as pensions adviser and London Pensions Fund Authority in the employer services team.

Burton has around 15 years of experience working across the finance industry, most recently at The Pensions Regulator and the East Sussex Pension Fund (ESPF), where he led the governance and compliance team, overseeing the development of policies and procedures, providing training, and ensuring regulatory expectations were met. At TPR, Burton primarily engaged with public sector and private occupational defined benefit schemes to resolve breaches of law and improve governance across the market.

McDines has worked at Hymans Robertson for the past 10 years, initially within the actuarial private sector before joining LGPS as a member of the GAP team. She has experience across all the core GAP team services from the delivery of large-scale data and backlog projects to development of the firm’s General Code of Practice Compliance Checker.

Additionally, Catherine Thain and Christian Ah-See join the firm’s Scottish risk transfer team as risk transfer specialists at a time when 2024 buy-in and buyout volumes reach record highs.

Thain has 12 years of insurer experience at Lloyds Banking Group, including four years as actuarial manager in the buy-in team at Scottish Widows. In her most recent role, she priced and executed buy-in transactions, as well as supporting schemes on their journey to buyout.

Ah-See joins from Barnett Waddingham where he started his career as a graduate. He has experience in the unique investment concerns that defined benefit schemes face during the risk transfer process.

Folksam – Stefan Lundbergh.has joined Folksam as strategic business developer for the life insurance division of Swedish pensions and insurance company Folksam.

In a LinkedIn post, he said: “What makes Folksam special is that it is a mutual company (i.e. owned by its customers). As a mutual it is one of the few pension and insurance businesses that can play the long game. I am looking forward to (hopefully) contribute to the long-term success of Folksam.”

Lundbergh left Cardano and NOW: Pensions after 11 years. He started at Cardano as head of innovation in 2013 and held the role of director of insights since 2016.

In 2020, he was appointed as head of defined contribution design for the group after Cardano bought NOW: Pensions from ATP back in 2019.

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