Presenters

Jonathan Stapleton

Editor, Professional Pensions

Jonathan is editor of Professional Pensions and has been reporting on UK occupational pensions since 2001. He has won a number of awards during his career, most recently the SPP Trade Journalist of the Year Award in 2019. He is also holder of the PMI's Retirement Provision Certificate.

Will Henderson

Co-Founder, CPTO, Knowa

Mohammad Rasouli

AI Expert for Investment, Stanford University

Fredric Karlsson

Chief Technology Officer, Heywood – PASA Experts for Digital Admin

Lena Komileva

Managing Director and Chief Economist, (g+)economics

Adolfo Aponte

Managing Director Risk Solutions, Cardano Advisory

Adolfo is a Managing Director at Cardano Advisory. He leads Cardano’s growing Risk-Solutions practice, which designs, executes, and supports trustees, corporates and asset owners on a wide range of underwritten, risk-transfer structures, including bulk purchase annuity contracts and longevity swaps. The team is recognised as a market leader in counterparty analysis, having advised on the transfer of over £40bn of pension liabilities since 2014.

Adolfo has experience working with insurers, reinsurers, banks and alternative de-risking providers on solvency, regulatory and other corporate matters that drive the strategic decision making. Prior to Cardano, Adolfo worked in New York in both corporate finance and capital markets roles.

Jon Loach

Director Pension Risk Transfer, Legal & General

Jon is a Director in the Pension Risk Transfer team at Legal & General which works with trustees, sponsors and their advisers to secure pension scheme member benefits through buy-ins, buyouts and other de-risking solutions. Over the last 20 years he has held roles at several consultancies and recently led LGIM’s Strategic Client team, the team responsible for maintaining relationships with LGIM’s largest institutional clients. Jon has supported many of Legal & General’s de-risking transactions, including its record-breaking £4.8 billion single scheme buy-in with the Boots Pension Scheme in November 2023. Jon is a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.

Daniela Silcock

Head of Policy Research, Pensions Policy Institute

Arif Saad, CFA

Head of Client Advice, Kempen

Arif Saad, CFA, is Head of Client Advice, responsible for leading how Kempen delivers their investment proposition to clients. This includes designing, developing and advising on strategic and tactical asset allocation strategies for our UK clients. In addition Arif is Head of People, UK.

Prior to joining Kempen in 2020, Arif was a Fiduciary Manager at Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM), and one of the architects of their fiduciary management offering. Prior to this, Arif was head of the Strategic Client Relationship Executive team at LGIM, working with their largest and most sophisticated UK pension funds clients, focusing on risk management and derivative strategies. Arif began his career within Mercer’s UK investment consulting business, where he advised a portfolio of defined benefit and defined contribution pension schemes, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds on the full spectrum of investment issues, including investment strategy, manager and mandate structure, manager selection, transitions and performance analysis.

Arif graduated from the University of Warwick with a BSc (Hons) in Industrial Economics. He is a CFA Charterholder and in 2021, Financial News named him a Rising Star in Asset Management.

Speakers