UK – Jim Clerkin, pensions administrator at the Royal Bank of Scotland, is to join the Medical Research Council as pensions manager amid restructuring within RBS.

Clerkin, who is also chairman of the Pensions Management Institute’s Southern Group, told IPE he would become pensions manager at the council. He said he was looking forward to taking a “central role” in his new job.

“There’s a lot of restructuring going on,” Clerkin said of Edinburgh-based RBS.

He will be working alongside Tom Cleary at the MRC fund. “I will eventually move to other duties,” Cleary said, adding: “We’re all very happy” about Clerkin’s appointment.

Clerkin’s appointment follows MRC’s decision in June to switch to specialist investment managers. The Council, a national organisation funded by taxpayers, said the review had been prompted by the “increasing maturity“ of the scheme.

The MRC’s 457 million-pound (663.7 million-euro) scheme had a surplus of 7.8 million pounds as at March 31 2003 under the FRS17 accounting standard, according to the MRC’s most recent annual report.

Earlier this year the Royal Bank’s head of pension fund strategy, Huw Williams, left to join UBS.