People moves: APG names admin chief for efficiency drive

APG, LGPS Central, Lægernes Pension, AMF, Railpen, ISS, L&G, Aon, Raiffeisen, Pinebridge, Candriam, EY, Swiss Re Life Capital, Muzinich & Co, AIB

APG – Wim Henk Steenpoorte has been appointed to the executive board for APG, the Netherlands’ largest pension fund manager. He has specific responsibility for pension fund services, and will serve a four-year term. His role gives him oversight of pension administration and communication to reduce complexity and increase efficiency. Before his appointment he was serving as interim chief operations officer at APG, and since 2015 he has been an independent consultant. Prior to this, he held various management and executive positions at financial services companies SNS and VIVAT.

Gerard van Olphen, chairman of APG’s executive board, said: “We want to give participants in pension funds maximum pension value. That is why we will be setting up our pension administration and communication even more effectively and efficiently in the years to come. Wim Henk Steenpoorte is better suited than anyone to take on this important task and put the focus on the interest of the participant.”

LGPS Central – The UK local authority pension fund pool has hired John Burns as chief operating officer and chief financial officer. He has held similar positions at a number of asset managers including Barings and Schroders. In his new role, he will oversee the pool’s asset management operations, liaise with internal and external providers, and oversee the financial management of the company. 

LGPS Central was set up to consolidate roughly £40bn of assets from nine local government pension schemes. Burns joins other recent senior staff appointments including Andrew Warwick-Thompson, CEO, and Jason Fletcher, CIO.

Lægernes Pension – Peter Melchior has been appointed as the new supervisory board chairman of Lægernes Pension, the Danish doctors’ pension fund. He is replacing Linda Nielsen, who is stepping down for private reasons, the pension fund said. Melchior has been a member of the supervisory board at Lægernes Pension since 2012, and has had a long career in the pensions sector. He was on the management board of labour-market pension fund provider PKA until 2012, where he was in charge of investment, IT, finance and accounts as well as risk management and the actuarial department among other areas.

Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) – Natasha Cazenave has been promoted to managing director, head of policy and international affairs at the French financial markets supervisor. She replaces Guillaume Eliet, who left the AMF after 12 years in regulatory policy to join Euroclear. Cazenave has been at the AMF since December 2010. She first worked as a senior policy officer in the asset management regulation division of the policy and international affairs department, and rose to become the division head in 2012. She was appointed deputy head of the entire department in February 2015. On an international level, she is co-chair of the Financial Stability Board’s expert group on shadow banking, and chair of the IOSCO policy committee on investment management in September 2012.

RPMI Railpen – The investment manager for the UK railways pension scheme has appointed Jocelyn Brown as senior investment manager within its sustainable ownership team. She will lead on corporate governance and report to Leo George, head of sustainable ownership at Railpen. Brown was previously at proxy advisory firm International Shareholder Services (ISS), where she was the global head for environmental, social and governance (ESG) product management. She also worked as a corporate governance adviser at the Financial Reporting Council, where she was the implementation lead for the UK Stewardship Code.  

Legal & General (L&G) – Daniel Godfrey, former chief executive of the Investment Association (IA), has been appointed to L&G’s independent governance committee (IGC), which oversees the workplace defined contribution (DC) schemes operated by L&G. He left the IA in 2015 and has since co-founded an investment trust, The People’s Trust, that he is positioning as a true long-term investor. Godfrey replaces Tony Filbin on the IGC, who stepped down in August.

Meanwhile, L&G’s DC master trust has appointed Moira Beckwith as a trustee. She had been at GlaxoSmithKline since 1995, where she was responsible for benefit programmes, including UK benefit and pension plans. She also replaces Filbin.

Aon – Steve Bale has been appointed as a principal consultant in Aon’s risk settlement team. He spent the last seven years with Legal & General, latterly as a Prudential risk actuary covering large UK and US pension risk transfer deals. He was head of longevity risk for two years before then, responsible for leading the delivery and approval of pricing, reporting and capital longevity proposals for UK and US clients. Since 2014 he has chaired the Continuous Mortality Investigation’s (CMI) high age mortality working party and been a member of its mortality projections committee.

Raiffeisen Capital Management – Joachim Vierlinger joined the asset manager this week as senior institutional sales manager. He will mainly be responsible for institutional clients in Austria. He was previously a senior sales and relationship manager at Invesco Asset Management in Austria.

PineBridge Investments – The asset manager has hired Gregory Ohlson to the position of consultant relations manager, joining the firm’s Europe, Middle East and Africa consultant relations team. Ohlson was previously senior relationship manager at Candriam, and has worked at L&G Investment Management, Itau Asset Management, AEGON Asset Management and AXA Investment Managers.

EY – The audit and consulting giant has re-hired Mark Godson as a partner in its actuarial team. He joins from Swiss Re Life Capital where he was a senior member of the mergers and acquisitions team. Prior to this he worked at EY for 10 years in its actuarial department in the UK and Singapore.