People moves: Cardano picks deputy CEO for NOW: Pensions

Cardano Group – The pensions advisory and investment management specialist has promoted Claire Bowyer to deputy CEO of NOW: Pensions. She will focus on the commercial, investment and governance aspects at NOW: Pensions, as well as managing all client-related teams.

Bowyer sits on the group management board and will continue to be a group partner, a director of Cardano UK, and the group’s general counsel.

She joined Cardano in 2009 and has more than 20 years of legal experience. As general counsel she manages the legal and regulatory aspects affecting Cardano’s business and clients’ investments. Prior to joining Cardano, Bowyer was a senior lawyer at Travers Smith.

Swedish Fund Selection Agency – Markus Andersson has been appointed to the role of quantitative analyst by the Swedish Fund Selection Agency (Fondtorgsnämnden, FTN) – the government authority running Sweden’s reformed premium pension platform.

Andersson will start the new job in the agency’s procurement and product strategy unit on 13 March, having worked as an analyst at the Swedish Pensions Agency (Pensionsmyndigheten) for more than six years. There, his most recent role was that of product owner for a team of developers working with data storage and statistics, according to the FTN.

The agency is busy building up its staff as it prepared to launch its first tender processes in the next few months. At the end of December, it announced seven new hires, and said last week that it is “continuously hiring”. Five open positions are currently being advertised at the agency, which is based in the Stockholm suburb of Botkyrka.

Lazard Asset Management (LAM) – Jennifer Ryan has joined the firm as managing director and head of North American distribution, effective immediately. Based in New York, Ryan joins from BlackRock where she held leadership roles in both its US and UK institutional client businesses.

As a member of the senior leadership team for Lazard’s asset management business, Ryan will be responsible for LAM’s business development in North America and will oversee its institutional client group, financial institutions group, alternative investments sales, and consultant relations group.

Fidelity International – The firm has appointed Jon Hutchings as director of business development in its workplace investing division.

He joined Fidelity in December 2022 from consultancy Hymans Robertson, where he was previously commercial lead for its defined contribution (DC) consulting business. Hutchings brings with him more than 30 years’ worth of experience in the UK pensions industry, having previously worked with HSBC and Aon in various sales, proposition development and DC consulting roles.

As part of his role at Fidelity International, Hutchings will use his broad perspective on the UK employee benefits market to build deeper relationships with Fidelity’s strategic consultant partners, supporting the growth of the workplace investing business.

Alternative Credit Council (ACC) – The global representative body for private credit fund managers and an affiliate of the Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA), has appointed Deborah Zurkow, global head of investments at Allianz Global Investors, as its new chair.

Zurkow assumes leadership of the ACC from Stuart Fiertz, co-founder and president of Cheyne Capital, who has chaired the ACC since its formation in 2016. Fiertz will remain on the ACC board.

XTP – David Bennett, former board member and head of investment consulting at Redington, joins XTP as a non-executive director and senior advisor. He will support XTP’s growth in the institutional asset owner space in the UK.

Bennett spent nearly 13 years at Redington where he played an integral role in growing the business from a start-up to one of the UK’s leading investment consulting firms. He was a board member, head of research, chair of Redington’s investment strategy committee, and a senior consultant where he advised some of the UK’s biggest and most sophisticated pension funds.

Before Redington, he spent 24 years at Goldman Sachs, including seven years working in the pensions and insurance strategy group advising UK pension funds and insurance companies, and served as a trustee and investment committee member of the Goldman Sachs defined benefit pension fund.

Partners Group – Teppei Kawai has been appointed as managing director, head of client solutions Japan, and head of the Tokyo office starting 1 April 2023. In this capacity, Kawai will work closely with the existing Tokyo-based team to grow Partners Group’s presence in Japan, a key growth market for the firm.

Kawai brings over 15 years of private markets industry experience in the Japanese market, across asset classes. Most recently, he was head of client and product solutions, Japan, at Apollo Global Management for over seven years, leading capital raising and client services for Japanese investors.

Punter Southall Governance Services (PSGS) – The firm has boosted its team with the appointment of Toby Andersen and Karen Henderson as scheme managers.

Andersen joins from Aztec Financial Services where he worked as a senior benefits specialist managing private medical, income protection, life assurance and flexible benefit schemes across Europe, the Middle East and Africa as well as pensions. He started his pensions career in 2012 at Mercer, before becoming an in-house secretary to the trustees and pensions manager at Lockheed Martin for six years.

Andersen’s responsibilities included running the trustee board through triennial valuations, scheme returns, audits, annual reports, meetings and buyout negotiations. His experience covered defined benefit (DB), defined contribution (DC), group personal pensions and master trust schemes.

Henderson joins from Virgin Money where she worked in the internal pension governance team, supporting the trustees on activity and a variety of projects, including the merger of two DC schemes, guaranteed minimum pension (GMP) rectification and equalisation and a bulk pension increase exchange exercise.

Henderson is highly experienced in managing pension administration projects, from implementing new schemes to managing them through the wind-up process and everything in between. She began her pensions career in 1990 at Scottish Amicable as a pension administrator and has also worked for Aon and Hymans Robertson.

The latest digital edition of IPE’s magazine is now available