Our governance
The Group is governed by the Governance Manual which sets out the high level governance arrangements approved by the Boards and includes the delegation of authorities.
It sets out those powers which the Boards wish to exercise themselves (or through formally constituted committees of the Boards) and the delegation of other powers, such as the day to day management of ReAssure, to the Chief Executive Officer and the ReAssure Management Committee.
The Governance Manual articulates:
- ReAssure’s ownership, legal and regulated entity structure.
- The interface between the Boards and their subsidiaries.
- The key responsibilities of the Boards and their sub committees.
- The key responsibilities of the Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and the ReAssure Management Committee.
- The principal authorities for Board and ReAssure matters.
- The operation of the matrix management structure and interface with our shareholders.
- The oversight arrangements over key in-sourced and out-sourced activities.
- The key aspects of the internal control environment which assist the Boards and Executive Directors and Officers to govern direct and control the business.
The Board is supported by committees which include:
- Audit Committee
- Risk Committee
- Board Investment Committee
- Fairness Committee
- Standing Committee
- Independent Governance Committee (IGC)
You can access the IGC Terms of Reference below. In summary, the Independent Governance Committee:
- Has a duty to assess the value for money of ReAssure workplace personal pensions on an ongoing basis.
- Review the design and execution of investment strategy.
- Consider whether costs and charges are appropriate for the scheme and its investments.
- Ensure appropriate assessment of the quality of service and governance standards
- Raise and escalate any concerns to the Board of ReAssure in the first instance, and ultimately our regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), if the IGC feel ReAssure have not responded to a particular concern.
Our IGC members have been carefully selected to ensure they have the appropriate skills, knowledge and experience in relation to Workplace Personal Pensions to be able to execute their duties.
The IGC represents scheme members interests and scheme members can contact the IGC to share their views directly. If you have any individual servicing queries or complaints you should raise these in the normal ways. Each year an Annual Report will be published on this page that will explain the work of the IGC over the previous twelve months.
ReAssure Ltd Board of Directors
Mike spent most of his executive career at Royal London in investment and insurance roles and was Group Chief Executive for 13 years until 2011. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries.
Matt has Masters degrees from both Manchester Business School and the University of Oxford.
Mike is a CIMA-qualified accountant, with over 26-years’ experience in the financial services industry. His past experience includes financial consolidation, external/financial reporting, management accounting, business partnering, mergers and sales.
He was previously with Aviva plc holding a variety of senior roles, most recently Group Consolidation and Reporting Director responsible for leading the Financial Consolidation and Reporting Services team for the plc Group.
Mike has also held senior finance roles in India, Europe and the UK.
He has been a Board member since 2008 and Chairs the Fairness Committee.
He has been a director of Scottish Mutual, Abbey National Life and Scottish Provident, where he chaired the Supervisory Committee which looked after the interest of with-profits policyholders.
He is a Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, and was previously a senior advisor to Government Ministers as a Director General on the Cabinet Office, Ministry of Justice and the Prime Minister's Office.
Brian is a director of Ardmore Shipping Corporation and Aergen Aviation Finance. He was previously a senior executive and director with major airlines in Canada and Ireland. He started his career at Arthur Andersen in Dublin and became a partner in 1998.
He is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland and holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree and a post graduate diploma in Professional Accounting.
Colin’s executive career was with Standard Life where, amongst a range of roles, he was Appointed Actuary and Group Chief Risk Officer.
She has over 30 years experience working with companies in the financial services sector, particularly insurance and pensions. During her long career with Ernst & Young, Denise was a member of various internal strategic boards, as well as the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and other technical committees and working groups.
Denise is a Member of Court (Board Director) at the University of Greenwich, and Chair of the Audit & Risk Committee. She also sits on the Board of Allianz UK, where she chairs the Risk Committee.
Margaret Hassall is an experienced non-executive director in the financial services industry and brings a broad range of experience developed across various industry sectors including manufacturing, utilities, and financial services, specifically focused on large transformational change, separations and integrations. She spent seven years working for Deloitte as a consultant and led the financial services consulting business for Charteris. Margaret has also been engaged as chief operations officer or chief information officer for divisions within some of the world's largest banks, including Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland.
Margaret is also on the boards of One Savings Bank, Nucleus Financial Group and Ascension Trust Scotland.
ReAssure Management Committee
Matt has Masters degrees from both Manchester Business School and the University of Oxford.
Since becoming Head of IT, Richard has lead the team in a series of transformation initiatives, including the modernisation of our core ALPHA platform, consolidation and outsourcing of our data centres, transformation of our end user computing to enable flexible working with improved security, and the adoption of a Cloud computing strategy going forward.
Richard came to ReAssure from Swiss Re Group, where he started in 1998 in the Divisional Life & Health IT function, and began his association with ReAssure when Swiss Re acquired Windsor Life in 2004. Prior to Swiss Re, Richard was a management consultant working for Renaissance Solutions Inc, and before that, for KPMG. He is American by birth, and has lived in the UK since 1990, holding both British and American citizenship.
He was the Deputy COO at ReAssure FSH UK (formerly known as Guardian Financial Services UK), and before that performed a number of senior roles at Aviva UK Life.
Angela is responsible for the core function of compliance in ReAssure, and for providing second line Compliance oversight of the business’s compliance with regulatory requirements (principally but not exclusively those of the FCA and conduct requirements of the PRA).
He progressed to Head of Financial Risk and has been Chief Risk Officer since January 2016.
He has been the Head of HR for ReAssure since 2009 delivering organisational transformation and change management programmes.
Mike is a CIMA-qualified accountant, with over 26-years’ experience in the financial services industry. His past experience includes financial consolidation, external/financial reporting, management accounting, business partnering, mergers and sales.
He was previously with Aviva plc holding a variety of senior roles, most recently Group Consolidation and Reporting Director responsible for leading the Financial Consolidation and Reporting Services team for the plc Group.
Mike has also held senior finance roles in India, Europe and the UK.
Annabel was previously Head of Change, Integration and Control within Customer Services. Prior to this Annabel undertook Programme Manager roles on major regulatory change projects and the integration of Guardian Assurance.
Before joining ReAssure, Annabel held various Operational and Project Management positions within the Financial Services industry.
David was previously MD of Old Mutual Wealth Life Assurance (OMWLA) and joined ReAssure at the beginning of 2020 when ReAssure purchased OMWLA, which has now been renamed ReAssure Life Limited.
David has over 30 years’ experience in life insurance companies, including undertaking senior roles at Aviva, Friends Life and Prudential. His current responsibilities include the operational management of ReAssure Life and the migration of its customers’ policies onto ReAssure’s core administration platform. David is a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.
She was appointed to the ReAssure Management Committee in 2012 and brings extensive financial services experience encompassing mergers and acquisitions, outsourcing, distribution and corporate finance.
ReAssure Limited is part of the Phoenix Group. You can find details of Phoenix Group’s Board and Committee membership here.
