Who’s who and who’s new?
A brace for Aon
Alex Beecraft has been appointed as a partner in Aon’s UK retirement team and leader of its employer covenant practice.
Beecraft has advised trustees and corporates on covenant issues for more than 10 years, first at PwC and most recently as a managing director at Cardano.
Prior to this, his experience had included a secondment to The Pensions Regulator, where he wrote its guidance on ‘Assessing and Monitoring the Employer Covenant’.
Aon has also appointed Nigel Aston its UK defined contribution (DC) solutions team as an associate partner and market development lead.
Aston brings more than 20 years of experience in DC investment strategies and before Aon, was a senior managing director at State Street Global Advisors, where he was responsible for global workplace strategy and ESG.
Aston held previous roles at Standard Life, Axa, SEI and technology startup DCisions, covering investment design, sales, and marketing and communication.
His new role will focus on working with clients and market evaluators to ensure client needs are well understood and addressed.
Three new faces at Broadstone, too
Broadstone has appointed Simon Kew as its new head of market engagement.
Kew will be responsible for raising Broadstone’s profile across its consulting & actuarial division, together with OAC, a UK based specialist actuarial and financial services consultancy acquired by Broadstone last month.
His role will be to increase market engagement through core audiences across new and existing clients, at conferences and speaking events and other external communications channels like social media. He will also take on a mentoring role within the business as a leading commentator on pension regulation.
Kew joins from Teneo, where he lead on strategy and relationships, a similar position to his previous role at Deloitte. Before that he spent three years at the Pensions Regulator across scheme funding, policy and latterly as lead on all government relations.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Clack has been appointed senior actuarial director in Broadstone’s Redditch office.
Clack joins from WTW, where he spent most of his almost 20 year career advising trustees and corporates across all sized of schemed a wide range of topics, including funding levels, investment strategies, sponsor ownership structures and covenants.
He has taken on the role of scheme actuary and will sit on Broadstone’s national strategic committee.
Finally, Sharon Harwood-Davis has been appointed a client consulting director.
With more than 20 years experience, she joins the independent employee benefits consultancy from PwC with particular expertise in the corporate healthcare and healthcare trust market.
As a technical healthcare specialist, Harwood-Davis works with clients to create proactive and measurable strategies to promote employee engagement and wellbeing.
The growing NHS crisis is causing increased demand for private healthcare options from employers. Economic inactivity due to ill health has also grown to an all time high of 2.55 million
Harwood-Davis, said: “It is a critical time to be working in the sector given the pressures on the NHS and employers.
“Now more than ever businesses need proactive strategies to support the health and wellbeing of their workforce keeping them fit, engaged and productive.”
And nine new partners for BW
Professional services consultancy Barnett Waddingham has appointed nine new equity partners.
In addition to the new partners, there are 12 principal and 30 associate promotions across risk, pensions, investment and insurance challenges. From 1 June 2023, BW will have a total of 97 partners.
Andrew Vaughan, senior partner at BW, said: “People choose to join BW because of our unique independent culture thanks to our independence.
“I am incredibly proud of the number of promotions we can make this year off the back of continued, strong organic growth within our business.”
The new partners are:
David Barnett, senior investment consultant;
Jude Bennett, investment consulting;
Nick Clynes, client relationship manager;
David Collington, head of benefit consulting;
Tom Cowley, pension administration;
Jacqui Derrick, head of people;
Simon Foster, head of Sipp;
Sarah Lochlund, senior investment consultant; and
Sam Underhill, senior technical actuary.
