In a statement on 11 September, it said Blackstones will become a fully integrated part of ZEDRA and leading ZEDRA’s operations in Poland.

Blackstones’ service offering includes accounting & reporting, HR & payroll, company formation and corporate services.

This latest acquisition will enhance ZEDRA’s strategy in the corporate and global expansion services space, reinforcing the ambition to be recognised as an international leader in Active Wealth, Corporate & Global Expansion, Funds Services and Pensions & Incentives.

ZEDRA will welcome 178 employees who have been providing these services through its offices in Warsaw, Katowice, Bialystok, Radom, Bydgoszcz and Torun.

This brings ZEDRA’s headcount to over 1,200 experts across 16 key locations spanning Asia, Oceania, the Americas and Europe.

Both organisations share the same core values, and their combined capabilities provide clients with access to a more diverse service offering, adding value and deepening client relationships.

Ivo Hemelraad, CEO at ZEDRA, said: “We are delighted to welcome the team from Blackstones. The combined extensive experience and knowledge will be a great asset as we look to further grow our Central European footprint and our Corporate and Global Expansion capabilities.”

Katarzyna Kowalczyk, CEO at Blackstones, said: “Joining ZEDRA, who shares our values, is a natural step on our path. We have always been driven by an openness to change and innovation, which is the foundation of our success. This partnership broadens our horizons, enabling us to further develop our range of services, and reach new and diverse markets and clients around the world. We are confident that together we will create a strong and dynamic organisation that will successfully meet the challenges of the future.”

The Octopus-owned investment platform has hired Kim Campbell as head of growth.

She was most recently head of strategic partnerships at Origo.

Nadine Barham has also joined as head of operations.

Barham has worked within the platform industry for the last 15 years, more recently running operations, oversight and change delivery teams for Abrdn’s Elevate and Wrap propositions. She was head of operations at Abrdn until 31 December 2021.

Finally, Tom Richards has joined the helm as Seccl’s head of engineering, reporting into the recently appointed chief technology officer Adam Jones.

He joins from Ada Fintech, the investment research technology company built and owned by Redington, where he headed up a 60-person engineering department.

Zedra

The financial services provider has named Jon McKay as global head of legal.

Most recently, he served as managing director and head of business solutions of TrustQore in Switzerland.

Azqore

The tech subsidiary of Indosuez Wealth Management has named Pierre Masclet as chief executive.

He succeeds Pascal Exertier, who is retiring.

Masclet was deputy chief executive of Indosuez WM.

XPS Pensions Group

Dan Carpenter has joined the firm as a partner in its investment team.

He joins XPS from Aon and has more than 20 years’ investment experience, having advised schemes of all sizes on every aspect of investment strategy and implementation.

Quilter Cheviot

The investment management arm of Quilter has hired Oswald Oduntan as an investment manager.

Oduntan will work in the Quilter Cheviot Managed Portfolio Service (MPS) team.

He joins the business from Columbia Threadneedle Investments, where he worked as a
fund manager assistant.

The average man aged 65 to 74 today has over £250,000 ($308,220, €284,100) of pension assets, compared to less than £150,000 for women.

And while there has been progress, particularly in closing the state pension gender gap, and in equalising participation rates through auto-enrolment, we are kidding ourselves if we think this will be enough to close the gap without further action.

One of the main causes of the gender pensions gap is the gender pay gap, with median weekly full time pay for men 17% higher than it is for women.

Closing the pay gap will go some way towards closing the pension gap. However, this will take too long to help many women currently in the workforce. So, is it time to think outside the box to close the gender pension gap? Here are ten ideas to consider, from the obvious to the radical:

• Use HMRC data so that the £10,000 auto-enrolment threshold applies across all jobs, not for each employment. 38% of women work part-time, compared to just 13% of men so this measure would secure auto-enrolment pension contributions for those (the majority of whom are women) who have two part time jobs adding up to more than £10,000 a year.
• Implement the change proposed in the 2017 review for auto-enrolment contributions to be calculated from the first £1 earned rather than the current threshold of £6,240 per year. This would help low earners and part-time workers benefit from employers’ automatic enrolment contributions.
• Simplify the current system where those earning less than £10,000 a year can ask to be auto-enrolled and then benefit from an employer contribution on annual earnings above £6,240. Replacing the £10,000 threshold with a monetary de-minimis limit on contributions plus tax relief at source on all auto-enrolment contributions would create a fairer system.
• Reporting: One way the gender pay gap has been reduced is the reporting requirement for all employers with more than 250 employees. We should do the same thing for the gender pension gap, including an action plan. This could be extended to reporting on scheme and regulatory returns so it becomes a key reporting metric with league tables of schemes and employers.
• Include the gender pension gap in ‘value for members’ assessments, including benchmarking against schemes with similar characteristics. This is to ensure that the extent of the gender pension gap becomes an important measure of whether schemes are providing value for money.
• Career breaks, particularly to look after children, are the biggest driver of the gender pensions gap. We should maintain auto-enrolment contributions through extended maternity breaks, with employer contributions continuing after the statutory maternity pay period. To compensate, auto-enrolment contributions could be higher (or auto-escalate) for a specific period after maternity leave or a career break to care for children.
• More radical is the Pensions Policy Institute’s proposal of a contribution top up for non-earning carers by the state, based on the minimum wage, to target this issue at source and boost women’s pension outcomes. This sounds expensive but could be paid for by a small adjustment to pensions tax relief.
• Pension assets rarely get shared on divorce and this means that divorced women as a whole have private pensions wealth of 55% of the population average. A pension share should be the default in any court proceedings. Schemes could also raise awareness by quoting indicative pension-share values available in the event of a divorce on annual statements.
• We should give consideration as to how the pension dashboard can help. This could be through linking, combining, or providing a joint pension dashboard for couples, highlighting survivors’ as well as members’ pension figures. We could also address the divorce issue by illustrating the potential value of a 50% share/split on divorce to both parties’ pensions on the dashboard.
• Finally, and perhaps the most radical suggestion, a ‘couple’s pension’. Amend the pensions tax and auto-enrolment rules to allow a special class of master trust, into which both parties (and their employers) pay and where the pot then provides benefits to each party equally.

This article was written for International Adviser by Mark Stopard, head of proposition development at Zedra Governance.

The international asset manager has named Tom Caddick as managing director of the international business.

He will lead the business from the 1 December 2022, taking over from Andrew Lodge, who retires in Q1 2023 after more than 25 years with the firm.

Caddick will continue to fulfil his current role as head of investments international in parallel.

Chartered Insurance Institute

Russell Higginbotham has been elected president of the CII for 2023.

He is chief executive of Swiss Re Solutions.

Higginbotham will work closely with current CII president and chief executive of Aston Lark, Peter Blanc, before he takes over on 1 January 2023.

Also, Ian Callaghan has been appointed to the role of deputy president. Callaghan is insurer relations director at Kingfisher Insurance.

Morningstar Wealth Platform

The platform has promoted Roopam Janda as director of operations, according to Linkedin.

Janda was previously head of implementation at the business.

Amundi

Nisarg Trivedi has been named as head of third-party distribution for the Middle East.

Trivedi joins Amundi from Schroders in Dubai, where he has been a director since 2017.

Rathbones Group

The investment manager has hired Marie Lawrence as a DFM specialist within the distribution team, covering the south east of England.

Lawrence joins from Charles Stanley, where she worked as an intermediary sales manager covering Thames Valley and the West Midlands.

Evelyn Partners

Linda Power has joined the wealth firm’s Channel Islands operation as investment director based in Jersey, according to her Linkedin profile.

She was investment counsellor at Nedbank Private Wealth International.

Capital Group

Vanessa Huang has joined the firm as director for financial intermediaries in Singapore and southeast Asia.

She was most recently the vice president of southeast Asia distribution sales at Franklin Templeton.

Zedra

Elaine Kennedy has been named as managing director of the financial services provider’s Guernsey office.

She has been at Zedra since 2005.

Kennedy’s appointment comes alongside Nick Slinn’s, who has also been promoted to deputy managing director.

Slinn, who has over 25 years’ experience in the financial services sector, joined the firm in 2019 following the acquisition of Interben Trustees in Guernsey.

Nicola Brown will assume overall responsibility for the Share Incentive business, having been a key part of the Zedra Guernsey team for nearly 13 years.

Impax Asset Management

The specialist asset manager has named Viktoria von Kunow as director, business development, Nordics.

She joins Impax from BNY Mellon Investment Management, where she was director of Nordic distribution for four years.

Quilter

The wealth manager has appointed Daisy Dupree-Loxton as head of wellbeing.

Dupree-Loxton joins from The Walt Disney Company, where she has been manager of wellbeing and mental health since 2019.

Nikko Asset Management

Marleen Barents-Jager has been named as business development director for the Benelux and Nordic regions.

She previously worked at Russell Investments and prior to that at Principal Global Investors, where she was responsible for sales in the Benelux and the Nordics.

Allspring Global Investments

The independent global asset management firm has bolstered its plus fixed income team with Sarah Harrison and Luigi Algisi.

Harrison joins as a senior portfolio manager from Morgan Stanley, where she was a credit portfolio manager at Morgan Stanley,

Algisi has been promoted to a portfolio manager and most recently served as a senior analyst for Allspring’s global fixed income research team.

Nucleus

The platform has appointed Gordon Wilson as chair.

He also chairs Ambassador Cruise Line and Virgin Experience Days, and previously chaired Interactive Investor.

The Maltese firm offers private wealth, corporate and virtual financial asset services. This includes trust, tax and estate planning services.

The acquisition adds 25 team members to Zedra Malta. In the coming months, the AlleyBe business will be fully integrated within the Zedra brand.

Ivo Hemelraad, chief executive of Zedra, said: “Under the leadership and the entrepreneurial spirit of its founder, Rudolph Psaila, AlleyBe’s team managed to develop a successful and compliance-oriented business model over the past seven years.

“We are delighted to welcome the clients and team members of AlleyBe, which benefit from an unrivalled reputation and an enviable expertise.

“The recent regulations for company service providers issued by the Malta Financial Services Authority upped the ante for doing business on the island, mapping out Malta as a key market in Europe and a highly attractive business environment for our industry. We look forward to exploring new growth opportunities within the region.”