Navigating the risk reduction landscape

Martin Bird

Martin is a Senior Partner and Head of our Risk Settlement Group. Martin is a qualified actuary and authorised to provide advice on insurance and capital markets transactions and spends all of his time working with clients on de-risking projects. This includes structuring risk transfer transactions, providing clients clear advice on the value for money of different types of solution, and identifying which solutions provide the best fit to the clients' objectives.

Martin has led many of the industry's high profile risk transfer transactions. His relevant experience includes:

• Leading the industry's major longevity swap transactions, including the BMW, Rolls Royce, AstraZeneca, Pilkington, BAE and BT deals, covering over £30Bn of UK pension liabilities - giving him unrivalled insight into how the market prices longevity risk;
• Currently leading an £8Bn hybrid intermediated / pass-through longevity swap deal;
• Structuring over £10Bn of reinsurance for a leading UK insurer;
• Advising the trustees of another scheme on a risk transfer transaction of in excess of £12Bn;
• Advising financial institutions who have evaluated acting as investors in longevity deals;
• Advising the PPF; and
• Advising on numerous bulk annuity deals, from £100M to £2Bn, including Cadbury, Lucas Yuasa and GKN plc.

Martin's extensive range of experience allows him to bring insight from both a pension scheme and investor mindset. He is frequently sought out by trustees, sponsors and the media and is widely recognised as one of the UK's leading settlement advisers.

Michael Walker

Michael is a Principal Consultant and Risk Settlement Adviser within Aon's Retirement and Investment practice. Michael advises clients on the full range of risk settlement structures including both bulk annuities and longevity swaps. His experience spans the adviser and the insurer sides of de-risking having spent 2.5 years working in Legal & General's Pension Risk Transfer business. Michael has worked on a wide range of de-risking transactions from a £1.5M buy-out to a multi-billion pound longevity swap and spent a year working with L&G's US business where he jointly priced and structured L&G's first US bulk annuity transaction for $450M.

Prior to joining Legal & General Michael was a Principal Consultant and Scheme Actuary in Aon's Trustee Advisory business advising clients with pension schemes ranging in size from £15M to £12Bn.

John Baines

John Baines is a Principal Consultant and Actuary, working in Aon's Pensions Practice since 2002. He splits his time between ongoing corporate appointments and specialist work in relation to risk settlement.

John is a qualified actuary fully regulated to provide risk settlement advice and leads Aon's medically underwritten bulk annuity team. More widely, he has advised on risk settlement projects from £5M to £8Bn.

During 2014, he developed Aon's AHEAD platform, which provides a unique one-stop shop for collecting medical and lifestyle data. Having worked with insurers to develop a platform that provides the data that each insurer needs, he has a unique insight into the underwriting and broking aspects of a transaction.

He is often quoted in the media in relation to bulk annuities, and is a frequent speaker on the topic.

Recent projects during 2015 include:

• Lead adviser for a large multi-national on three full scheme pension buy-outs, completed within a 6 months period, as part of a $4Bn corporate transaction.
• Lead adviser on the largest medically underwritten bulk annuity and the largest medically underwritten full buy-out.

More broadly, John advises clients on long term pension risk management strategies.

Dermot Courtier

Is Head of Group Pensions for Kingfisher plc which he joined in September 2007. He also supports and acts as Secretary of the UK Kingfisher Pension Scheme. This Scheme has 2 sections, a closed legacy section with c37000 DB members and c£3bn of AUM and an open DC section with c32000 members and c£160m AUM.

Prior to joining Kingfisher, Dermot was the Director, UK Client Delivery for ExcellerateHRO and the former Towers Perrin Administration Solutions (TPAS) business which he joined in April 2003. Between 1994 to 2003, he was the Group Pensions Strategy Director of the Royal Mail Group plc pension plans Prior to this, Dermot held a number of senior Human Resource executive / Director positions across both the retail food, fashion and distribution sectors.

He is a member of the Advisory Council of the Money Purchase Forum and OPDU.

Dermot read Economics at the University of Bath and did an MBA at the University of Bradford Management Centre. He is a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (Chartered FCIPD) and a Fellow of the Institute of Hospitality (FIH).

His interests include most sports, particularly Rugby Union, and he is a former Hon Secretary of his local club - Keynsham RFC Ltd.

Andrew Murphy

Head of Longevity Pricing

Andrew joined Pacific Life Re in 2012 and is responsible for the pricing of European longevity risk. He has over ten years’ experience and has developed a wealth of knowledge and expertise from a variety of roles in pension scheme consultancy and insurance.

David Collinson

Head of Strategic Development

David is responsible for strategic development at PIC, having previously been Co-head of Business Origination. David has nearly 30 years of experience in pensions and insurance and has led some of the largest transactions in the market, including the recent £1.6bn Total pensioner buy-in, the £1.5bn EMI all risks buyout and the £1.1bn Thorn buyout.

David has been with Pension Insurance Corporation since its inception in 2006, prior to which he was Global Head of M&A services at Watson Wyatt.

Ben Roe

Ben is a Partner in Aon’s Retirement and Investment Business. He is a qualified actuary with over 12 years’ experience.

Ben is the Head of Aon’s specialist member options team and spends the majority of his time providing advice to companies and trustees on new options which could be offered to members at retirement and bulk incentive exercises such as PIE, ETV, and FRO exercises.

As part of this role Ben has implemented some of the largest, most complex liability management exercises which have taken place in the UK pensions market.

Recent experience includes:

• Lead advisor on largest fully advised PIE exercise in the UK market
• Lead advisor on a range of de-risking initiatives for a Global Pharmaceutical company and Large Life Insurance Company over 2015
• Launching the Aon Retirement Options Model which is a market-leading online tool designed to provide members with education and guidance on all the options available to them at retirement. The model is also integrated with the IFA market making it easy for individuals to access advice at discounted cost.

Alongside this role Ben also provides ongoing corporate advice to a range of companies.