The European pension supervisor’s occupational pensions stakeholder group (OPSG) has announced more than 20 new members – and the departure of its chair Philip Shier – as it prepares for its next two-and-a-half-year term.

Alongside Shier’s departure comes that of Chris Verhaegen, the OPSG’s inaugural chair from 2011; PGGM’s Niels Kortleve; Joachim Schwind of Germany’s Hoechst Pensionskasse; and Fritz Janda of FVPK, Austria’s pension fund association, among others.

All five have served the maximum two terms allowed under the constitution, having joined in 2011.

Overall, 21 of the 30 OPSG members are new, leaving behind current deputy chair and PensionsEurope chief executive Matti Leppälä and Janwillem Bouma of Shell’s Dutch pension fund.

Łukasz Budzyński of XBUG, representing the interests of multi-national companies with cross-border pension arrangements, and Michaela Koller, who heads up industry association Insurance Europe, also remain.

Notable new appointees include Fieke van der Lecq, formerly APG chair of pension markets at the Erasmus School of Economics in Rotterdam and also a member of Dutch regulator AFM’s committee on financial reporting and accounting; Philip Neyt, who heads up Belgian pension association PensioPlus; Kevin O’Boyle, head of pensions at UK telecoms giant BT; and Senka Fekeža Klemen of Croatia’s Erste Pension Fund Management.

Gabriel Bernardino, EIOPA’s chairman, welcomed the new appointees and thanked the outgoing members for their contribution.

“I want to extend my sincere thanks to all former Stakeholder Group members for their continuous commitment and highly valuable input to the work of EIOPA during the past years,” he said.

“Our common goal is to ensure a sound regulation, robust supervision and enhanced consumer protection in Europe.”

The 21 new members of the OPSG are:

  • Paul Brice, RPMI (UK, IORP representative)
  • Francesco Briganti, European Association of Paritarian Institutions (Italy, IORP representative)
  • Senka Fekeža Klemen, Erste Pension Fund Management (Croatia, IORP representative)
  • Stefan Nellshen, Bayer Pensionskasse (Germany, IORP representative)
  • Philip Neyt, PensioPlus (Belgium, IORP representative)
  • Kevin O’Boyle, BT (UK, IORP representative)
  • Alf Alvinisussen, independent consultant (Norway, SME representative)
  • Bernard Delbecque, European Fund and Asset Management Association (Belgium, professional association representative)
  • Paul Kelly, Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (UK, professional association representative)
  • Sonia Maffei, Assogestioni (Italy, professional association representative)
  • Falko Valkenburg, Actuarial Association of Europe (Netherlands, professional association representative)
  • Tomas Bern, PTK (Sweden, employee representative)
  • Damien Lagaude, UNI Europe (France, employee representative)
  • John O’Quigley, pension trustee (Ireland, employee representative)
  • Alexandru Ciuncan, Romanian Association for Insurance Promotion (Romania, beneficiary representative)
  • Claudia Menne, German Trade Union Confederation (Germany, beneficiary representative)
  • Guiseppe Corvino, Bocconi University Milan (Italy, academic representative)
  • Paul Cox, University of Birmingham (UK, academic representative)
  • Zdeněk Hustak, Prague University (Czech Republic, academic representative)
  • Raimond Maurer, Goethe University Frankfurt (Germany, academic representative)
  • Fieke van der Lecq,  Free University Amsterdam (Netherlands, academic representative)

EIOPA said it received 176 applications for the vacant positions at the OPSG and its insurance equivalent.

The new OPSG will meet for the first time on 28 April. 

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