People moves: Railpen appoints chief financial officer

Railpen – The trustee and Railpen boards have appointed Nick Ranson as Railpen’s chief financial officer and executive director.

Ranson will be responsible for managing financial activity on behalf of the £34bn railways pension schemes, securing the future for over 350,000 members and pensioners.

Ranson is a qualified actuary with extensive experience in the insurance, funds management, and banking sectors. He joins Railpen from Standard Chartered Bank, where as a managing director, he was the global head of financial reporting transformation, and prior to this, served as director of finance reporting and operations at M&G.

EIOPA – Johan Lundström, chief legal officer at industry association Insurance Sweden (Svensk Försäkring), has been appointed by the supervisory board of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) as a new member of its occupational stakeholder group.

The purpose of the group is to advise EIOPA on all matters relating to the authority’s tasks. It consists of 30 members, who serve a term of four years, with the option to extend that for a further four years.

Hymans Robertson – John Dickson has announced he is retiring from the firm on 31 March 2025.

Dickson was the firm’s senior partner from 2017 to 2023 and held a variety of leadership responsibilities within the business, including head of investment consultancy and chair of the board. Throughout his career he has provided strategic advice across the firm’s full range of investment clients.

Dickson is a fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries with more than 25 years of experience focusing largely on investment strategy and risk management, spanning both the life and pensions industries. When he joined Hymans Robertson in 2003, he pioneered some of the current investment solutions for pensions, before taking on the leadership of the investment practice.

Länsförsäkringar Liv – Cecilia Kellner has been appointed as the new head of asset management at the Swedish pensions and life insurance network. She will take up the role on 1 June, replacing Göran Laurén, who is retiring.

Kellner is currently chief investment officer at Nordea Liv & Pension, a job she has had for nearly three years, having worked at Nordea for over eight years.

Lombard Odier Investment Managers (LOIM) – David Whitehair has been appointed to the firm’s UK institutional sales team. His appointment forms part of LOIM’s strategic growth ambitions within the UK defined contribution (DC) market.

Whitehair will also be leading LOIM’s strategy in partnering with with-profits insurance clients.

Based in London, Whitehair has 19 years of financial industry experience. Most recently, he was a director in the UK client group at Janus Henderson Investors, where he was responsible for the strategic development and growth of the UK DC business. Prior to this he held senior DC focused roles at Franklin Templeton and Fidelity International.

Whitehair reports to Ritesh Bamania, head of UK institutional sales and global consultant relations at LOIM.

Morningstar – David Pagliaro has been named chief strategy and product officer for Morningstar Sustainalytics.

Based in London, Pagliaro will lead the Sustainalytics global product strategy, overseeing development, execution and, go-to-market plans to drive commercial success across all client segments and key regions. In this role, Pagliaro will report to Ron Bundy, chief executive officer of Morningstar Indexes and Morningstar Sustainalytics, and join the executive leadership team at Sustainalytics.

Pagliaro joins from InfoPro Digital Group, where he was CEO of risk global for the last six years. Prior to that, he was senior vice president and EMEA regional head of global exchange for State Street.

Neuberger Berman – The asset manager has hired London-based seasoned investor Maya Bhandari as chief investment officer, multi-asset strategies, EMEA.

Bhandari, formerly global head of multi-asset at BNP Paribas Asset Management, will be responsible for leading the multi-asset team’s investment and commercial efforts.

She will work closely with senior members of the investment team on global view development, portfolio construction, and investment decision making with a focus on the EMEA region, including as a leader in the firm’s asset allocation and public private investment committees.

Lazard Asset Management (LAM) – The firm has announced the appointment of Bertrand Levavasseur as managing director and head of Switzerland, to lead the growth of its Swiss business.

In this role, Levavasseur will work as a trusted advisor to support clients in the development and implementation of relevant investment solutions.

Levavasseur brings more than 15 years of experience in asset management business development. He joins from Oddo BHF Asset Management, where he served as head of strategic accounts and new markets, and led the development of strategic client relationships, especially those in Switzerland and Italy, and group strategic new market development, particularly in the Middle East.

Saparately, the group, Lazard, has appointed Peter Harrison to its board of directors. He has more than 35 years of experience in investment management, most recently serving as group CEO of Schroders from 2016 until his retirement in 2024. This appointment reinforces Lazard’s focus on further strengthening and diversifying its asset management business.

Harrison has also served as a founding member of the UK Treasury’s Asset Management Taskforce and the Capital Markets Industry Taskforce, and he is chair of Business in the Community, the King’s responsible business charity.

Isio – The UK-based investment consulting firm has appointed Ritchie Thomson as a strategic advisor to its regulatory conduct business.

Thomson was a supervisory specialist at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). His career spanned 20 years and saw him lead FCA’s supervisory work for the advice sector, including establishing the team overseeing defined benefit (DB) pension transfers and serving as the architect of its ongoing advice review.

At Isio, Thomson will work closely with Andy Mewis and Ben Goodwin, who lead the firm’s regulatory risk and rectification team, to broaden the business’s reach within the wider regulatory conduct and remediation space.

Thomson’s unique experience will add weight to the support Isio offers and it will leverage his expertise to advise clients on complex reviews, collaboration with regulators and managing risk. He will play a key role in developing strategies to address contingent liabilities in past advice books, overseeing reviews relating to high risk products such as DB pension transfers, and advising on new and emerging conduct risks, such as the FCA’s Motor Finance Review.

Royal London Asset Management (RLAM) – Lee Hollingworth has been hired as DC and retirement proposition director. In this newly created role, he will report to Susan Spiller, head of proposition, and will work across both RLAM and Royal London Mutual Insurance Society.

Hollingworth’s focus will be on developing innovative pension propositions for both Royal London’s members and defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) clients.

Hollingworth brings extensive industry expertise, with over two decades of experience in pensions and retirement solutions. He was most recently head of UK retirement at Franklin Templeton, where he gained valuable asset management insights into retirement solutions.

Cartwright – The pension specialist for DB and hybrid schemes has further enhanced its development team with the appointment of Carl Rodrigues as growth manager.

Robin Pearce, operations director at Cartwright, said: “At the end of 2024 we announced a whole company rebrand and the launch of several new service lines including charitable trusts, corporate treasury and funeral trusts, that sit alongside and complement our established pensions and employee benefit functions. Carl will play a key role in driving business development across these exciting new areas.”

Rorigues brings more than 30 years of experience in sales and strategy, focused on scaling early-stage tech startups in data, AI, fintech, and bitcoin. He spent a decade at the Open Data Institute, and in recent years he has worked with actuarial and insurance professionals on data and AI related learning.

The latest digital edition of IPE’s magazine is now available