LawDeb Pension Trustees’ team grows to 30 with the appointment of a new Trustee Director
On May 1st The Law Debenture Team welcomed a new Trustee Director, Alan Baker.
Alan joins LawDeb from Mercer where since 2017 he has been Head of DB Solutions Development and Chair of the DB Policy Group. Alan had been a Partner at Mercer since 2011 and was responsible for developing and then leading Mercer’s ground breaking fiduciary management business Mercer Dynamic De-risking Solution (MDDS) as well as Mercer’s DC platform Mercer Workplace Savings (MWS). Alan also led the project to develop and launch the first longevity hedging solution for smaller DB schemes Mercer Smart DB, a key innovation that opened the market to schemes with more than £50m of pensioner liabilities.
In his time at Mercer, as well as working to advise specific clients, Alan sought to drive forward the business’ approach to pension risk management and improve the advice to clients across both defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC). This included the use of Integrated Risk Management (IRM), the concept of cashflow driven funding and investment advice as well as a wide range of other developments. More recently this has extended to include a focus on the use of technology given the increasing importance of automation and digital solutions within pensions. Alan led the identification and subsequent roll-out of RiskFirst’s market leading risk management software PFaroe migrating almost 700 pension schemes to a new technology platform in less than a year.
Before joining Mercer, Alan worked in a number of consulting roles within the insurance industry. This included time at Oliver Wyman as well as PwC and IBM where between 2002 and 2007 he was commercial director for the strategy consulting team. Prior to that, he worked for Lloyds Bank from 1989 to 1997 in a number of roles including establishing an internal software house, the “Software Factory”.
Commenting on Alan’s appointment LawDeb Pension Trustees Managing Director Michael Chatterton said:
“We are delighted to have Alan join the team; he brings with him an in-depth understanding of both DB and DC pensions and will no doubt hit the ground running. Alan’s understanding and extensive experience of designing and implementing technology will be of huge value to LawDeb’s clients who are seeking innovative and efficient ways to use technology to manage schemes and communicate with members.”
In addition to his professional experience Alan acts as trustee and director of Strawberry Hill House a cultural heritage site internationally famous as Britain’s finest example of Georgian Gothic Revival architecture.
Alan holds a BSc (Hons.) in Biochemistry from Imperial College, London and is Associate of the Royal College of Science. He is currently studying towards his PMI Certificate in Trusteeship which all LawDeb trustee undertake.
The LawDeb team is thrilled to welcome Alan.