Judging panel 2024
Rob Barrett, Head of UK Distribution, Reframe Capital
Jana Bour, Head of Policy & EU Partnership, Impact Europe
Francesco Briganti, Secretary General, CBBA-Europe
David Butcher, Managing Director, Communications and Content
Evalinde Eelens, Board Member on multiple Dutch pension schemes
Snædís Ögn Flosadóttir, Head of Institutional Sales and Services, Arion Banki
Chetan Ghosh, Chief Investment Officer, Centrica Pension Scheme
Matti Leppälä, Secretary General/CEO, PensionsEurope
Jerry Moriarty, CEO, Irish Association of Pension Funds (IAPF)
Richard Poole, Legal Director, Pensions & Employee Benefits, Royal Mail Group
Tim Reay, Treasurer, International Employee Benefits Association (IEBA)
Mike Smaje, Trustee Executive, BESTrustees
Oscar Van Angeren, Partner, Houthoff
Rob Barrett, Head of UK Distribution, Reframe Capital
Rob Barrett joined Reframe Capital last year as head of UK distribution. Reframe Capital is a new breed of solutions provider, combining strategic advice, product structuring, marketing and fundraising services as an integrated proposition for private markets managers and investors. Rob started his career as an assistant portfolio manager at Hill Samuel Investment Management. During his career, he worked at SSgA, JP Morgan, AXA Rosenberg and more recently Invesco and Lazard Asset Management. He is highly regarded in the European and UK pensions and asset management arenas and has served as a judge of the European Pensions Awards for many years.
Jana Bour, Head of Policy & EU Partnership, Impact Europe
Jana Bour is the Head of Policy and EU Partnerships at Impact Europe (formerly EVPA) - the investing for impact network. With more than 10 years of experience in EU policy making, she joined Impact Europe from EPRA, where she led since 2016 the cross-departmental/cross-functional work on policy strategies regarding the EU Green Deal and its Sustainable Finance agenda. While at EPRA, Jana formed and steered the SFDR Working Group, forged new partnerships and joint working groups with other organisations (e.g. WorldGBC, RICS, INREV), and executed projects to support the sector’s active engagement with policy makers. During that time, she started to serve as a jury member in the European Pensions Awards.
In her earlier career, Jana gathered political experience in the European Parliament after which she moved to the private sector representing and advocating for the interests of private property owners (UIPI) and then to BDO, the fifth largest network of public accounting, tax and advisory firms in the world.
Jana is a native Slovak speaker, fluent in English and intermediate in French. She has a legal background with a specialisation in European Law gained at Maastricht University (NL). In 2023, she gained a certification from the INSEAD’s Execute Programme on Strategy for Listed Real Estate.
Francesco Briganti, Secretary General, CBBA-Europe
Francesco Briganti is the Secretary General of the Cross Border Benefits Alliance – Europe (CBBA-Europe), an EU advocacy association that promotes the creation of cross border and pan-European social benefits solutions (including occupational/workplace and personal pensions). Francesco is also the CEO of the Employee Benefits and Welfare Institute (EBWI), a Belgian public affairs company, and a member of the Stakeholders Group on Occupational Pensions of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority. Additionally, Francesco set up and currently chairs both the Italian and the Belgian/EU branch of the International Employee Benefits Association (IEBA). Between June 2016 and 2018, Francesco was the Coordinator of the World Pension Alliance (WPA), a platform of the main worldwide private pensions advocacy organizations.
Prior to this, Francesco was the Director of the European Association of Paritarian Institutions of Social Protection (AEIP) - an EU advocacy organization representing 1,200 employee benefits providers. Francesco has a law degree from the University of Bologna (Italy); a Master’s degree in International Political Economy at the University of Kent (UK); and a Ph.D in EU social and labor law at the University Foundation Marco Biagi in Modena (Italy) and the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) as co-tutor. As an expert, he has been for several years a member of the European Commission’s Pension Forum and he has been speaking at more than 300 public events all over the world
David Butcher, Managing Director, Communications and Content
David Butcher is a communications professional who advises financial services clients on their messaging, thought leadership and reputation in the media. He launched his consultancy Communications and Content in 2017 and has worked in the sector for 25 years. He started his career in consultancies, such as Lansons, where he launched Citywire.co.uk and Moneysupermarket.com before specialising in investment management and long-term savings. He has held a number of senior roles at businesses including Fidelity International and M&G Investments. He is a Fellow of the RSA, publishes the popular annual Readability Report and writes regularly on communications issues in the trade media.
Evalinde Eelens, Board Member, multiple Dutch pension schemes
Evalinde Eelens presently serves as an executive board member for the Dutch industrywide private security pension scheme, holds a board position for the Dutch painters' pension scheme, and acts as a supervisory board member for the Robeco corporate pension scheme. Evalinde serves as an associate at Muse Advisory, a UK-based firm. In this role, she provides expertise in advising pension funds on matters related to investment governance and fiduciary management. Prior to transitioning into her current role as a full-time trustee and supervisor, she held the position of an investment strategist, providing advisory services on investments to various Dutch and international pension schemes at esteemed organisations such as PGGM and A&O Services. She earned a Cum Laude MBA degree in Sustainable Business in the Global Economy and is a strong advocate for outstanding (investment) governance.
Snædís Ögn Flosadóttir, Head of Institutional Sales and Services, Arion Banki
Snædís Ögn Flosadóttir has sixteen years of experience within the pension and investment industry. She is Head of Institutional sales and services at Arion bank, former Managing Director of EFÍA and LSBÍ pension funds and COO of Lifeyrisauki supplementary pension fund.
Snædís’ experience within pensions and investments is broad and encompasses, among others, asset management, operations and governance. She has also worked with the Icelandic Pension Funds Association on projects concerning new legislation for pension funds and served as the chair of the Education committee of the association. In July 2015, the boards of the aforementioned pension funds appointed Snædís Managing Director. She held that position for eight years and has recently taken over as head of Institutional sales and services at Arion bank. In her years both as Managing Director of the pension funds and in her new role at Arion bank, Snædís has been an advocate speaker for all aspects of pension and investments, published articles, given lectures and speeches as well as participated in panels and public deliberation.
Chetan Ghosh, Chief Investment Officer, Centrica Pension Scheme
Chetan Ghosh is the Chief Investment Officer for Centrica's pension scheme arrangements and held an in-house role for 13 years before moving over to Schroders Solutions to carry on the same role in an OCIO capacity. He has been responsible for providing support to the directors of the Investment Committee. His role covers investment strategy considerations, asset class and manager research, and the liaison with the investment advisers. Chetan’s background is primarily from the consultancy side, where he spent 5 years as a pensions actuary and 12 years on the investment side, a large part of which was at Aon. In addition, he has spent time in the asset management industry as a multi-manager, Investment Solutions (now Mobius Life), where he was involved in developing their Fiduciary Management offering.
Matti Leppälä, Secretary General/CEO, PensionsEurope
PensionsEurope is the leading voice for funded pensions in Europe representing 25 European national pension fund associations covering over 80 million Europeans and € 6 trillion of assets. Matti Leppälä is a member and was the chair and vice-Chair in 2013-2018 of the Occupational Pensions Stakeholder Group of EU supervisory authority EIOPA, a member of the European Commission’s High-Level Group of Experts on Pensions 2018 – 2019 and the chair of the World Pension Alliance 2023 - 2024 and 2018 – 2019. Before joining PensionsEurope in 2011 Matti worked for 11 years for The Finnish Pension Alliance in EU and international affairs, investment policy and legal issues. In 1990’s Matti worked for the Finnish trade unions in collective bargaining, labor law and social policy. In 1986 Matti started his professional career at the Ministry of Justice in Finland. Matti has a LLM and an Executive MBA in Insurance and Financial services.
Jerry Moriarty, CEO, Irish Association of Pension Funds (IAPF)
Jerry Moriarty is CEO of the IAPF which represents pension savers in Ireland. Its members are responsible for some €127bn in retirement savings and aims to ensure people in Ireland can have pensions that are secure, fair and simple. Jerry is on the board and, in 2023, was elected as Chairperson of PensionsEurope. He also chairs its Future of Pensions Working Group. Since 2018 he has been a member of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority’s Occupational Pensions Stakeholder Group. He previously worked for the Irish regulator, the Pensions Authority, Sun Life Financial of Canada in the UK and Irish Life in Dublin. In 2014 he was voted Irish Pensions Personality of the Year and in 2016 was named by Pensions Insight as one of the Top 50 People in Pensions
Richard Poole, Legal Director, Pensions & Employee Benefits, Royal Mail Group
Richard Poole is the pension and benefits lawyer for Royal Mail Group, which has a number of pension schemes in the UK. He has been advising on the administration and management of the Group’s pension schemes since 2000, including the transfer of the Group’s historic pension liabilities to Government, ongoing pensions reform and the introduction of a CDC scheme. Richard is a trustee of a charity, the Rowland Hill Fund.
Tim Reay, Treasurer, International Employee Benefits Association (IEBA)
Tim is a former Chairman and current Treasurer of the International Employee Benefits Association, which provides education, information and professional development opportunities to people working in the field of international employee benefits. He is also a senior member of Mercer’s Multinational Advisory Group based in London. Tim is an experienced international employee benefits actuary, whose career has spanned 35 years consulting to multinational corporations, organisations and governments on all aspects of retirement and risk benefit provision for employees around the world. He has implemented, reviewed or advised on pension and benefit plans for multinational clients in a wide range of countries, has lived in the UK, Belgium, France and Italy, speaks several European languages, and has worked for clients all over the world.
Mike Smaje, Trustee Executive, BESTrustees
Mike Smaje joined BESTrustees in 2020. He has over 30 years’ pensions experience, as a former scheme actuary and investment consultant before becoming a professional trustee. He currently represents BESTrustees on eight pension schemes. His clients range in size from £100m to c. £4bn. Mike specialises in funding and investment matters.
Oscar Van Angeren, Partner, Houthoff
Oscar is a partner at Houthoff law firm, where he leads the investment management practice group. His work focuses mainly on the establishment of investment institutions, including private equity funds, hedge funds, real estate funds, retail funds (UCITS and non-UCITS) and funds of funds. Oscar also advises asset managers, pension funds and other institutional investors on matters such as discretionary and fiduciary/integrated asset management, asset pooling and the laws and regulations that apply to collective and other forms of asset management. He frequently publishes and teaches on various subjects related to asset management and custody.
