David Pitt-Watson,

Executive Fellow,

The London Business School

David is Co-Author of ‘The Purpose of Finance’, ‘What they do with your Money’ and several other books. He Co-Chaired the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative, and led the Royal Society of Arts Tomorrow's Investor Project. David is the Treasurer of Oxfam, a Board-member at NESTA and is recognised globally as a leading thinker and practitioner in the field of responsible investment and business practice. David is a winner of the Transparency Trophy and his ground-breaking work on 'Purpose' was the initial inspiration behind the creation of Team PISCES. David is a frequent speaker at TTF events.

Catherine Howarth,

Chief Executive Officer,

ShareAction

Catherine is CEO at ShareAction, the leading civil society organisation in Europe promoting Responsible Investment, transparency and good governance by institutional investors. Catherine holds a First Class BA in Modern History from Oxford University and an MSc in Industrial Relations from the London School of Economics. In June 2011 she was named a 'Rising Star of Corporate Governance' by Yale University's, Millstein Center. Catherine was recognised by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader in 2014 and is a Transparency Trophy winner. Catherine is a frequent speaker at TTF events.

Daniel Godfrey

Founder,

The People's Trust

For most of the last twenty years Daniel has held CEO roles at two trade associations. Firstly, as Director General of the Association of Investment Companies for eleven years and then, for three years, he was CEO of the Investment Association - the trade body for the UK’s £5.5 trillion investment management sector. At the Investment Association, Daniel drove forward the development of a client-centric set of Investment Principles. In addition to his role at The People's Trust, he is currently a Non-Executive Director of Big Issue Invest Fund Management, the Investor Forum and the Ethical Capitalism Group. Daniel is a member of the Transparency Task Force’s Costs & Charges Team and a Transparency Trophy winner. Daniel is a frequent speaker at TTF events.

Jackie Beard,

Director of Manager Research Services for EMEA, 

Morningstar

Jackie leads Morningstar’s engagement with the due diligence teams of institutional investors. She is a leading industry voice on investment trusts and has pioneered greater transparency from closed-end funds on their holdings, authoring the paper “Investment Trusts: Why Transparency Matters”. Jackie is a member of the Transparency Task Force’s Stewardship & Decision-Making Team and a Transparency Trophy winner. 

Con Keating,

Head of Research,

Brighton Rock Group

Con has been a member of the steering committee of the financial econometrics research centre at the University of Warwick. He has held senior positions at several international institutions including the European Federation of Financial Analysts Societies, Societe Universitaire Europeene de Recherche en Finance and the OECD’s private pensions committee. Con has published widely on the regulation of financial institutions and pension systems and has developed new statistical tools for financial data analysis. Con is involved with many of the Transparency Task Force’s Teams and is a winner of the Transparency Trophy. He speaks frequently at TTF events. 

Dr. Anna Tilba,

Lecturer in Strategy & Corporate Governance and Director of Corporate Engagement,

Newcastle University Business School

Dr. Anna Tilba is a researcher and a Lecturer in Strategy and Corporate Governance and a Director of Corporate Engagement at the Newcastle University Business School. She joined NUBS in 2012 from the University of Liverpool Management School where she obtained her PhD in corporate governance and where she was teaching Strategy both at undergraduate and postgraduate level.

Her research interests include pension fund investment, financial intermediation and networks, accountability, corporate governance and investor engagement.  Anna has an emerging record of publications in top tier academic journals. She also reviews papers for such scholarly journals as Corporate Governance: An International Review, Organization Studies, European Management Review, Business History and her papers appear at various international conferences. 

Anna has been a member of the Advisory Committee on Fiduciary Duties of Investment Intermediaries for the Law Commission. The Consultation Paper on Fiduciary Duties is commissioned by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and arises from the Kay Review of UK Equity Markets and Long-Term Decision-Making.

More recently, Anna has carried out research for the UK Financial Conduct Authority on the Effectiveness of the Oversight Committees as past of the FCA's Asset Management Market Study

Furthermore, Anna is a member of the Transparency Task Force’s Costs & Charges Team and the International Best Practice Team; and she frquently participates at TTF events. 

Ralph Frank,

Co-Head of DC,

Cardano

Ralph was part of the team that set up Cardano's UK business in 2007. Prior to Cardano, Ralph was European Director of Consulting at Mercer Investment Consulting. Ralph is a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. He graduated as a Bachelor of Economic Science from the University of Witwatersrand. Ralph is a leader of the TTF's Costs & Charges Team and a Transparency Trophy winner. 

Ralph is also on the Financial Conduct Authority's Institutional Disclosure Working Group being Chaired by Dr. Chris Sier.

Markus Krebsz,

FRSA, GCRP and Chartered MSCI,

The Group of Experts on Risk Management in Regulatory Systems

Markus is a seasoned Risk specialist and Government advisor with 25 years’ experience in global financial markets, thereof almost 20 years in managing risk.

Executive director and Board member of a new UK challenger bank. Previously, as Interim CRO, instrumental in launching/ establishing a high-profile capital markets/ lending institution start-up for the UK government and playing a pivotal role in achieving its strong investment-grade ratings. Current member of a United Nations working party on risk & regulation; previously advising the World Bank, the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC).

Co-Founder and acting Chairman of the Culture & Conduct Group, Chairman (ex-officio) of the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment (CISI) FinTech Forum. Ambassador of the Transparency Task Force, member of its Banking team and contributor to the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Fair Business Banking. Mentor/ member at Google Campus.

Well regarded thought-leader and lecturer with some of the world’s best academic institutions and frequent appearances at Industry’s top speaking circles. Published author/ editor of several books, incl. on the Global financial crisis as well as other technical publications. Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA).

JB Beckett,

UK Director,

Association of Professional Fund Investors,

JB is a veteran fund selector and strategist. He is a Fund Gatekeeper for Scottish Widows, a large UK insurer and pension provider. He is a recognised thought leader in the fields of fund analysis, research and governance and author of the controversial book ‘#NEWFUNDORDER’. JB is a columnist, lecturer and global presenter on a variety of fund management and digitalisation topics. The Association of Professional Fund Investors (APFI) is dedicated to the pursuit of professionalism in fund investing. In addition to his role at the APFI, JB's senior portfolio includes: consulting CIO, Chartered Member, Author and Senior Reviewer for the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investments, and member of the Z/Yen Long Finance think-tank. JB is a member of several Transparency Task Force Teams, most recently Team PISCES.

Robin Powell,

Founder,

The Evidence Based Investor

Robin was a TV reporter, producer and presenter for more than 20 years, working for Sky News, ITV and for The Sunday Politics on BBC 1. For Sensible Investing TV, Robin produced and presented the online documentary ‘How to Win the Loser’s Game’. He is the founder of Regis Media, which provides niche content and social media management for growing fiduciary businesses and he also runs The Evidence Based Investor. Robin is a member of the Transparency Task Force’s Costs & Charges Team and a Transparency Trophy winner.

Steve Conley,

Founder & CEO,

Values Based Adviser; and 

Principal Leader of TTF's Market Integrity Team

Values Based Adviser is an international operation helping individuals connect with values-based advisers, organisations and investments, and helping social entrepreneurs in developing countries set-up values-based investments.

In addition to his role at Values Based Adviser, Steve is:

 - Non-Executive Director, Workplace Pensions Direct

 - Director of The Blair Project, using motorsport as a tool for engagement to enthuse and inspire young people to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and digital industries

 - Former Head of Investments of HSBC

 - Former Head of Savings & Investment Strategy RBS Group

 - Former Head of Wrap & Innovation at Santander

 - Former Chair of British Bankers’ Association Bancassurance Steering Group

Steve has worked at a senior level in the pensions and investments sector since 1982 and is known for bringing the first wrap platforms and the first retail multi-asset funds to the UK. He has been a chartered insurance professional since 1989, twice Jubilee Prize winner at IIM and twice Broker Prize winner at BIIBA.

Steve is an active participant in several of the TTF's Teams and is Principal Leader of the Market Integrity Team, which he initiated.  

Henry Tapper, 

Founder of Pension PlayPen;

Director at First Actuarial

Henry is a blogger at henry.tapper.com, the Founder of Pension PlayPen (a fintech promoting confidence in workplace pensions) and a Director at First Actuarial.

He has campaigned for greater transparency in the pensions industry for many years and is very well known for his belief that there is a tremendous need to restore public trust in the pensions and investment industry, such that savers at large and ultimately the industry itself prosper in the long-term. 

In particular, Pension PlayPen has long campaigned for greater transparency on what happens to the pension contributions created by auto-enrolment.

Henry sees social media as a key means to get messages out to the public. When he's not at work he is on a boat in the summer and supporting Yeovil Town if it’s not.

Rory Maguire

CEO

Fundhouse

Rory has been in the investment industry since 1997. Prior to co-founding Fundhouse in 2007, he was CEO of a fund management firm. He has had various executive roles at large and small fund managers and has significant experience inside both active and passive fund management firms.

At Fundhouse he focusses his efforts on fund research, asset allocation and overall business strategy.  Fundhouse is an independent, owner-managed investment consultant providing manager research, asset allocation and portfolio construction to institutional investors and wealth managers. 

Fundhouse is regulated by the FCA.

Philip Meadowcroft

Independent Shareholder Activist

Philip graduated from the University of Nottingham with a degree in Industrial Economics and after an early career in advertising he forged a business in developing and managing  export sales in emerging markets for global consumer goods companies.    

His concern about corporate governance has grown out of his chairmanship of the trustees of his family trading company’s SSAS and he came to public prominence in 2012 during the first Shareholder Spring – now a fixture on the corporate calendar.     The Times described his performance at the 2012 Aviva plc AGM which criticised the Board about excessive executive remuneration in relation to business results as a “slasher fest” – the CEO resigned four days later and the Chairman departed within two months.   

Philip demonstrated that company AGM’s could – and should - be converted, where appropriate, into robust challenges from ordinary retail shareholders - the more so when institutional shareholders generally prefer to stay away from such meetings.   

Earlier Philip was – and still is – a leading member of NUPAG (Norwich Union Policyholders’ Action Group) which campaigns for with profits policyholders to be treated respectfully and fairly by both providers and regulators. He has applied, with prominent media backing, the same relentless approach in tackling the FSA/FCA with particular reference to the way in which the current regulator, the FCA, has found itself hamstrung by its application of the so-called principles of Maxwellisation (a concept which quaintly  happens to immortalise one of Britain’s biggest corporate crooks) thus seriously delaying publication of the FCA’s report into the collapse of HBoS and RBS.   

Pursuing improved corporate and financial product transparency has been at the core of Philip’s campaigning activities.

Philip commented: “To be invited to be a TTF Ambassador is a considerable privilege though it is surprising because I am not a mainstream financial professional but I am absolutely independent and beholden to no organisation.  TTF has already made an indelible mark on the financial services scene and is now poised to become an even more influential force in coordinating intelligent and experienced evidence-based opinion to inform our political masters and product providers on the critical aspects of restoring, through markedly improved transparency, public faith and confidence in financial services.”

Ian Peacock

Chief Client Officer,

IG Group

Ian is currently Chief Client Officer at IG Group, a £3bn UK listed global on-line trading firm with offices in 20 countries.

Ian oversees a global team responsible for managing over £500m in annual client revenues. In 2016 he led the firm’s entry into the savings and investment by launching a digital wealth management platform, IG Smart Portfolios, in partnership with BlackRock. Ian is responsible for all aspects of the diversification strategy and serves as Chairman of the Investment Committee. He also served as Head of IG Group for the UK and Ireland.

Prior to joining the firm in 2015, Ian worked for Credit Agricole CIB as CEO of the Americas, based in New York, and later as UK CEO of their European Equity Franchise Cheuvreux. In parallel he headed their equity trading and distribution platforms globally. Ian was a member of the executive team leading various business launches, joint ventures and divisional turnarounds as well as launching one of Europe’s first MTF’s.

Ian’s other experience includes strategy and commercial roles at the London Stock Exchange, GE and various start-ups in the trading and investment space. 

Ian serves on the advisory board of CoInvestor, an alternative asset investment company.

Ian received a BSc (Honours) in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Leeds and an MSc (Distinction) in Strategy and leadership from London Business School where he was a Sloan Fellow. 

Paul M. Secunda,

Professor of Law and Director, Labor and Employment Law, Marquette University Law School

Paul M. Secunda is the author in whole or in part of six books, nearly six dozen law review articles, and other short writings on pensions, employee benefits, labor law, employment law, employment discrimination law, and special education law. 

Paul chaired the U.S. Department of Labor’s ERISA Advisory Council to the Employee Benefit Security Administration, and was a Senior Fulbright Scholar in Australia studying that country’s superannuation system. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute, the founder and faculty advisor to the Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review, and is recognized internationally as an academic thought leader in the field of international and comparative pension law.

Furthermore, as a passionate believer in the need to improve transparency in pension funds, Paul has been co-leading the charge to develop TTF's International Best Practice Team to address this issue around the world through the creation of a Global Pension Transparency Index.

Bernie Nelson,

President,

Style Research,

North America

Prior to joining Style Research, Bernie held positions as Head of Risk and Head of Quantitative Analysis at Scottish Widows Investment Partnership, then the asset management arm of Lloyds TSB and one of Europe’s largest asset managers. He was responsible for developing portfolio risk management and integrating quantitative techniques into a fundamentally based investment process.

Dr. Kara Tan Bhala,

President and Founder,

Seven Pillars Institute for Global Finance and Ethics

The Seven Pillars Institute is the world’s only independent think tank for research, education, and promotion of financial ethics. The Institute was shortlisted in the Prospect Think Tank Awards 2016.

Kara has over twenty-three years in global finance and is lead author of International Investment Management: Theory, Ethics and Practice, one of the first books to provide a comprehensive understanding of investment principles, synthesize three theories of finance, and apply ethics in financial practice focusing on Asian cases.

She was named by Ingram's as one of the "50 Kansans You Should Know". Kara has five degrees across three disciplines and has lived in London, Oxford, Singapore, Hong Kong, New York, and Washington, D.C.

Matthew  Murray, 

Co-founder,

The Center for Business Ethics and Corporate Governance

In January 2017, Matthew Murray completed his second assignment for the Obama Administration - as a Senior Advisor on Governance and Rule of Law at the Center of Excellence on Democracy, Human Rights and Governance at the U.S. Agency for International Development.  As a Senior Advisor, Mr. Murray helped the Center develop strategies and design development assistance programs to counter systemic corruption in critical nations.    

From 2012-2015, Mr. Murray served the Administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa at the U.S. Department of Commerce.  Mr. Murray led the Department’s efforts to apply commercial diplomacy, strengthen the rule of law and build mutual prosperity with 117 countries in the EMEA region as well as the European Union and African Union.  Mr. Murray developed innovative programs to build good governance and champion entrepreneurship in Ukraine, Romania, Moldova, Tunisia, Kenya, and Nigeria.  

Throughout his career, Mr. Murray has worked at the intersection of U.S. foreign policy, international law, commerce, and political economy.  Upon graduating from Tufts in 1979, he was selected in a national competition as a Research Assistant to Dr. Leslie Gelb at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He subsequently served as Legislative Assistant for National Security to Senator Edward Kennedy, focused on nuclear arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union and diplomacy towards the Middle East and Northern Ireland. 

In 1984, he was awarded a scholarship as an International Fellow at the Columbia University School of Public and International Affairs; he graduated in 1988 with an MIA and JD from the Law School.

From 1988-91, Mr. Murray was as an Associate Attorney at the international law firm of Baker & McKenzie, where he helped the firm launch a Russia law practice and establish one of the first western legal offices in Moscow. In 1991, Matthew Murray founded Sovereign Ventures, Inc., a management consulting firm that advised Fortune 100 companies, government agencies and multilateral organizations in Russia/Eurasia on how to counter corruption risk and engage in dispute resolution.  In 2000, Mr. Murray co-founded the Center for Business Ethics and Corporate Governance, a non-profit dedicated to building rule-based markets in the region. 

Between 2007 and 2009, Mr. Murray served as Corruption Risk Manager at TNK-BP Management Ltd., then the third largest producer of oil and gas in Russia, leading a corporate task force to establish a new system of compliance with anti-corruption laws and ethics performance throughout the 65,000 person workforce. 

Mr. Murray’s work in the field of political economy includes writing, teaching, speeches and testimony on the importance of voluntarily adopting best practices of ethics, corporate governance, and social responsibility.  In 2011, he was invited by the Brookings Institution to help launch the World Forum on Governance and to co-write a research paper, “Freedom from Official Corruption as a Human Right”, published in 2015.

George Kinder,

Founder,

The Kinder Institute

of Life Planning

George Kinder is a Harvard educated economist, philosopher, financial planner, Buddhist teacher, and the founder of the Kinder Institute of Life Planning, a network of over three thousand financial advisers on six continents trained to inspire consumers to recognize and achieve their lives of greatest meaning.

The recipient of many financial industry awards including the first ever Heart of Financial Planning Distinguished Service Award from the 29,000 member Financial Planning Association, he was recently named the first of fifteen most transformational financial advisers whose vision most changed the financial planning industry.

His latest book, A Golden Civilization, combines his decades of financial leadership with his lifetime of mindfulness practice to create new principles of economics and pose the question: What would it take to create a civilization that thrives with freedom for a thousand generations?

At the core of his solution is transparency, not just in financial services but in every structure of society.

George’s expertise has been widely featured in the press across six continents including The New York Times, Forbes Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Time Magazine, Fortune, NPR, and many others.

Stephen Davis

Associate Director and Senior Fellow, Programs on Corporate Governance and Institutional Investors, Harvard Law School

Stephen Davis, Ph.D. is associate director of the Harvard Law School Programs on Corporate Governance and Institutional Investors, and a senior fellow at the Program on Corporate Governance.

He has also been a nonresident senior fellow in governance at the Brookings Institution. From 2007-2012 he was executive director of the Yale School of Management’s Millstein Center for Corporate Governance and Performance and Lecturer on the SOM faculty.

Davis served on the US SEC’s Investor Advisory Committee. He is a trustee of ShareAction and was for nine years chair and a board member of Hermes EOS, the shareowner engagement arm of Hermes Pensions Management. Davis was also co-director of the Brookings’ World Forum on Governance.

Winner of the 2011 ICGN Award for Excellence in Corporate Governance, Davis is co-author of What They Do With Your Money: How the Financial System Fails Us and How to Fix It (Yale University Press, 2016) and The New Capitalists: How Citizen Investors are Reshaping the Corporate Agenda (Harvard Business School Press, 2006).

His Shareholder Rights Abroad: A Handbook for the Global Investor (1989) was the first study comparing corporate governance practices in top markets. Davis is a co-founder of the International Corporate Governance Network and co-author of the UN Principles for Responsible Investment. Davis earned his doctorate at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and completed undergraduate studies at Tufts and the London School of Economics.

Jon Lukomnik,

Executive Director,

Investor Responsibility Research Institute

Forbes calls Jon Lukomnik one of the pioneers of modern corporate governance.  Jon serves as executive director of the IRRC Institute, whose research has been widely praised for objectively examining fundamental corporate governance and capital market issues.

He is also the managing partner of Sinclair Capital LLC, a strategic consultancy to asset owners and asset managers. He co-founded the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN) and GovernanceMetrics International (now part of MSCI), and served as interim chair of the Council of Institutional Investors’ executive committee.

Jon served as investment advisor for New York City’s pension funds in the 1990s and has invested or overseen more than $100 billion in institutional assets during his career. He has been a director for various public companies, private companies, not-for-profit corporations and litigation trusts. He has consulted to major institutional investors with aggregate assets of more than half a trillion dollars including the New York State Common Retirement Fund, Maryland State Retirement and Pension System, Nikko Asset Management, International Finance Corporation, Legg Mason, and Savings Bank Life Insurance USA.

Jon currently serves as a trustee for the Van Eck mutual fund complex in the United States and related investment trusts in Ireland, as a member of the Standing Advisory Committee for the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, and on Deloitte’s Audit Quality Advisory Committee. He was a member of the official creditors committee which rehabilitated WorldCom following its fraud and bankruptcy.

Mr. Lukomnik has been honored by the International Corporate Governance Association, National Association of Corporate Directors, Ethisphere and Global Proxy Watch.

More than 200 of Jon’s articles have been published in academic and practitioner journals. His most recent book, What They Do With Your Money: How the Financial System Fails Us and How To Fix It, has been praised by legendary investors including Yale CIO David Swensen and Vanguard Founder Jack Bogle.

Richard Field,

Director,

Institute for Financial Transparency

The Institute for Financial Transparency, an organization focused on bringing valuation transparency to all the opaque corners of the financial system and the sponsor of the Transparency Label InitiativeTM.

Since the mid-90s, he has been a leader in defining and implementing transparency in the structured finance industry.

Mr. Field designed, developed and patented a low cost information system to handle all of the complexity involved in making each structured finance security transparent. His solution uses a data warehouse to provide all market participants with easily accessible, standardized collateral level data on an observable event basis over the life of each deal.

In April 2008, Mr. Field wrote a Learning Curve column for Total Securitization that described the gold standard for transparency for structured finance securities. Subsequently, he  consulted with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners on their July 2012 white paper on financing home ownership. In both of these widely read publications, he discussed the need for both timely disclosure of the underlying collateral performance information and the use of a data warehouse to capture, standardize and disseminate this data.

Apparently, while his call for timely disclosure was ignored, his call for the use of a data warehouse was heard. In Europe, the European Central Bank championed the creation of the EU Data Warehouse to provide transparency into structured finance securities.  In the U.S., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are in the process of building this data warehouse for residential mortgage-backed securities. It is called the Common Securitization Solutions LLC.  About these two data warehouses, Mr. Field remarked, as the beaver said to the rabbit looking down on the Hoover Dam, “I didn’t build it all by myself, but it is based on an idea of mine.”

Earlier in his career, he worked as an Assistant Vice President for First Bank System and as a Research Assistant at the Federal Reserve Board. Mr. Field has an MBA from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from Yale University.

Also, Mr. Field is the author of 'Transparency Games:  How Bankers Rig the World of Finance'; and a member of the Transparency Task Force's Team Americas.

Darby Hobbs,

CEO/Founder SOCIAL3;

Co-Founder & Chairperson Conscious Capitalism Boston Chapter;

Adjunct Professor, Boston University and Bridgewater State University (Social Entrepreneurship and Impact Investing)

Darby Hobbs is a visionary, social innovator, motivational presenter, educator, author, and strategic marketeer. Focused on Relationship to LIFE, Oneself and Mankind and building the bridge between what individuals value through understanding their LivingWell^TM Model and their whole life plan including investments.

It’s about connecting the heart, to the mind, to the wallet.

Working with company business leaders, investment firms and financial advisory groups to develop a deeper understanding of how to apply ESG/SRI and Impact Investing criteria into business decisions and to understand the value drivers of individuals ready for being part of the new investment experience - fusing brand and sustainability principles for asset growth.

Darby has also developed programs geared towards academia; targeting social entrepreneurship and innovation as well as student-led impact investing funds. 

Through SOCIAL3 ‘Telling the Story’ – Conscious Business Show - becomes paramount as she produces this through various mediums to educate, build brand awareness and engagement with the marketplace.

Her passion in creating positive change, along with the belief that businesses exist for profit and purpose, and that the financial system and the value drivers connected to this today is both a key challenge and opportunity to unlock.

Ian Fryer,

Head of Research,

Chant West, 

Ian is an actuary and has been heavily involved in Australia’s superannuation and pension industry for over 20 years in a range of actuarial, administration, consulting and research roles.  

For the last 12 years he has been Head of Research at Chant West, a leading superannuation consultancy and research firm established in 1997. Chant West's research on superannuation and pension funds is highly regarded for its accuracy, insightfulness and integrity, and it is widely used by financial advisers and by the funds themselves. 

The research feeds into a suite of user-friendly tools that make it easy for funds, advisers and individual consumers to analyse and compare products on a fair, 'apples with apples' basis.

Ian is is responsible for managing a team that provides product research used by a large number of superannuation funds, financial advisers and consumers to compare superannuation and pension products.  

A key area of concern for Chant West is to ensure that products are compared on a like-for-like basis, which is a challenge given inconsistent disclosure by funds in Australia.  Ian and Chant West have long advocated for improved disclosure of fees, insurance and investment performance in the Australian environment.

Dr David Knox BA PhD FIAA,

Senior Partner, 

Mercer

David is a Senior Partner at Mercer and Senior Actuary for the Pacific region.  He is the National Leader for Research and Policy in Australia and the actuary to the Tasmanian and Western Australian public sector superannuation plans.

He was the industry expert of the three person team who conducted a review of Military Superannuation for the Australian Government and is the lead author of the Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index.

Before joining Mercer, David was at PricewaterhouseCoopers and prior to that was the Foundation Professor of Actuarial Studies at The University of Melbourne. In his two decades in academia, he acted as a consultant to a range of financial organisations, in both the private and public sectors, specialising in the superannuation and retirement incomes area. He has spoken and written widely in this area and has served on many Government and industry committees. 

David was an independent Board member of Australian Prudential Regulation Authority for five years and President of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia in 2000. 

Tomas Wijffels,

Senior Policy Advisor,

The Federation of Dutch Pension Funds.

Tomas Wijffels MSc. (1971) has worked as policy advisor for seven years at Pensioen Federatie (the Federation of the Dutch Pension funds). His main topics of interest are the recommendations on administrative costs and the current discussion about the future of second pillar pensions in the Netherlands. 

Tomas is board member of the Dutch pension tracking service, www.mijnpensioenoverzicht. This tracking service for 1st and 2nd pillar pensions is built and maintained by a foundation of which all Dutch pension funds and insurance companies contribute to.

Before working for the Federation,  Tomas was board member of the company pension fund of TNO, the Dutch Institute for Applied Sciences, where he worked as a consultant in the field of cultural heritage.

Also, Tomas is a valued member of TTF's Team EMEA.

Eric Veldpaus,

Founder, 

Institutional Benchmarking Institute

Eric Veldpaus has been at the epicentre of cost transparency throughout his career. Before his current position at the independent Institutional Benchmarking Institute he was strategist at APG where his focus was on all aspects of cost and cost transparency including relations with auditors and the Dutch Central Bank.

Prior to APG, he held senior positions at ABP, Robeco and PWC. Eric is author of several prominent publications on cost transparency, including the ‘Recommendations on Administrative Costs’ (Aanbevelingen uitvoeringskosten)’ published by the Federation of the Dutch Pension Funds; he is also a lecturer at Nyenrode Business University in the Netherlands. At APG he was member of the Global Advisory Committee of CEM.

In 2013 he founded the independent Institutional Benchmarking Institute together with partners Nyenrode and Novarca to further his ambitions in the field of cost reporting.

Eric holds a CA degree.

Further information about Eric, his work and organisations can be found through these links:

IBI: (http://www.institutionalbenchmarking.org/?lang=en)

Novarca: (https://www.novarca.com/).

Also, as well as being an Ambassador of the Transparency Task Force, Eric is a valued member of the TTF's Team EMEA, Team GTI and Team PISCES.

Peter Kolthof,

Partner and Head of the Netherlands,

Avida International

Peter has worked in the pensions industry for most of his career. In two decades he has built extensive knowledge, insight and experience in the areas of asset and risk management, covering the full breadth of the investment organisation (front, mid, back office, support services, manager selection), processes (from strategy to implementation) and asset categories.

Before joining Avida Peter was at Shell Asset Management Company, where his last role was Head of Equities. In that role he was also involved in the consolidation of Shell Pension Funds’ assets. Peter was then CFO/COO of an investment boutique for a few years. Lately, as a consultant to Pension Funds he has focused on the areas of asset and risk management.

Peter is an econometrician and tax lawyer by training, completed by executive education programs at the Harvard Business School and Nyenrode Business School. Today he is a lecturer at Nyenrode Business School.

Larry Elford,

Founder,

Investor Advocates

Larry is founder of InvestorAdvocates.ca in Canada, which seeks to understand motivations that warp financial systems from being of service to the public, to becoming a dangerous drain upon the public.

Larry Bates,

Founder,

The Wealth Game

Larry Bates is a former banker turned investor advocate, author, and speaker. Larry spent over thirty years in the investment business with prominent institutions in Toronto, Canada and London, England including as Global Head of Debt Capital Markets for RBC Capital Markets.

Over the course of his career, Larry both collaborated with and advised many of the world’s most sophisticated investors and financial institutions.

Larry founded the website wealthgame.ca  in 2017 and has written a book, to be published in late 2018, aimed at helping average investors understand how to achieve better outcomes.

Larry is currently a member of the Investor Advisory Panel of the Ontario Securities Commission.

He is also an active member of TTF's Team Americas.