Helen Dean to chair Standard Life Master Trust
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Standard Life, which is part of Phoenix Group, has appointed Nest's outgoing chief executive Helen Dean to chair the board of its defined contribution master trust, while Gurmukh Hayre joins as a trustee director.
Dean, who has led arm’s length master trust Nest since September 2015, will chair the board looking after the interests of more than 300,000 scheme members from May next year, subject to regulatory approval. She will replace Richard Butcher, who has chaired the SLMTC since 2015. Hayre will join the board from 1 April 2024, pending regulatory approval, while Rene Poisson will end his tenure as independent trustee director after nine years.
Gail Izat, managing director for workplace at Standard Life, said: “Helen is a visionary who has been at the forefront of revolutionising pension saving in this country for over two decades. Her focus on better outcomes for people and the social purpose of pensions closely aligns with our holistic view of financial engagement, education and wellbeing.”
She added: “Likewise, Gurmukh was a standout candidate, and members will benefit from his broad multi-industry experience in consultancy and insight gained as a professional independent trustee to some of the country’s best-known brands.”
Standard Life said Dean was a high-profile figure in UK pensions who is credited as the architect of the programme that delivered auto-enrolment in 2010 and helped set up a low-cost pension scheme for the Personal Accounts Delivery Authority before it became Nest.
In addition, she is a trustee and non-executive board member of debt advice charity StepChange, as well as a member of the Council of Scholar Advisors, Centre for Recruitment Initiatives at Georgetown University in Washington, a governor of the Pensions Policy Institute UK, and a member of the advisory board to the Money and Pensions Service.
Hayre is an accredited professional trustee and former head of the DC pensions practice in KPMG. He currently holds non-executive roles at the Atos DC Retirement Plan, Cadbury Mondelez Pension Fund and Centrica Pension Schemes. Until recently, he was also an independent trustee of the National Pensions Trust.
As well as working in pensions, Hayre chairs the trustees of Molly Olly’s Wishes, a charity supporting children with life-threatening illnesses and their families.
