The UK’s Pensions Regulator (TPR) has hired an executive director of strategy and risk as it prepares to take on new powers granted by government.

Jo Hill will join the regulator’s team in November from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the UK’s financial services watchdog.

Hill is currently the FCA’s director of market intelligence, data and analysis. She has worked at the FCA since 2009 in a number of roles, including head of data and analysis and head of corporate strategy.

She has also worked for the FCA’s predecessor, the Financial Services Authority.

At TPR, Hill will be tasked with ensuring that the regulator’s new “clearer, quicker and tougher” regulatory approach works effectively across the industry, as well as taking the lead on improving its use of data to monitor emerging risks.

TPR chairman Mark Boyle said: “I am extremely pleased Jo has been appointed to this key role at TPR. Under our TPR Future programme, we have made great strides in developing and implementing a new, more proactive culture and approach to regulation and I am confident Jo will ensure our clearer, quicker and tougher strategy continues to have an impact.

“The effective use of data in the early detection and mitigation of risks is crucial and through her wealth of experience and knowledge in this area, Jo will help maximise our effectiveness as we strive to make workplace pensions work for savers.”

The appointment comes as TPR’s chief executive, Lesley Titcomb, prepares to step down in February after a four-year tenure.

Separately, the FCA has named Sheldon Mills as its new director of competition, joining from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) where he is a senior director for mergers and state aid.

Mills has worked at the CMA – previously the Office of Fair Trading – since 2010, overseeing the regulator’s approach to UK company mergers since 2014. Before joining the CMA he worked at London law firms including SJ Berwin, Jones Day and K&L Gates.

He will join the FCA in November and will be responsible for promoting competition “in consumers’ interest”, the regulator said, as well as overseeing its activities to “enforce prohibitions on anti-competitive behaviour” within financial services.

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