Philip Shier, senior actuary at Aon Hewitt in Dublin and a veteran of the pensions industry, is to retire from the consultancy at the end of July after more than 33 years of service.

Shier, who qualified as an actuary in 1985, will take up a new role with the Society of Actuaries in Ireland following his retirement.

Over the course of his career, Shier rose to become a well-respected member of the occupational pensions industry, taking on various roles in professional associations in addition to his work as an actuary for Hewitt Associates, later Aon Hewitt.

He is chair of the Actuarial Association of Europe (AAE), having been appointed in September 2015 for a one-year term.

He was chairman of the association’s Pensions Committee from 2005 to 2011 and became a member of the committee in 1999.

Shier has also played an important role in the pensions industry through his membership of the Occupational Pensions Stakeholder Group (OPSG) of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA).

He was appointed to the OPSG when it was first established, in March 2011, and continued as a member for the OPSG’s second two-and-a-half-year term, which included one year most recently as its chair following the resignation of Benne van Popta last spring.

Shier stepped down from the OPSG in March this year, having served the maximum permissible two terms.

He is also a member of the Pensions and Employee Benefits Committee of the International Actuarial Association.

At Aon Hewitt, he was involved in projects such as a feasibility study of a pan-European pension fund for EU researchers, which is now seeing the light of day in the form of the RESAVER pension scheme.

He also advised some major multinationals on the establishment of cross-border pension plans.