Here is how the PPF’s new CEO , Michelle Ostermann introduces herself on Linked in.

I have over 30 years of pension investment and senior leadership experience. I am currently the CEO of the Pension Protection Fund and Chair of the global pension industry association, International Centre for Pension Management (ICPM).

I’ve held several other senior positions at leading firms, including Managing Director of Railpen Investments in the UK and most recently Senior Vice President and Global Head of Capital Markets at PSP Investments in Canada.

We are not dealing with a shy and retiring person here, her’s is an appointment that suggests the PPF is not going to sit back on a £12bn surplus and live in easy street for the next ten years.

“Sweat that surplus, build on that success”

these are the kind of thoughts that I’d be having if I were the CEO of the PPF and reading Michelle Ostermann’s initial posts, I get the feeling she thinks that way too.

As a public corporation the PPF manages £32 billion assets on behalf of  249,000 members. Right now  it’s  mission is to pay the right people, the right amount at the right time. This is laudable and a great improvement on the mess Britain found itself in in the early years of the century before Government set its mind to creating it.

But £32bn , is not an awful lot of money compared to USS or LGPS , it isn’t even as big, in terms of assets  as Nest.

Small wonders the PPF has an expansive mindset.

Now it has a CEO with a mindset to match

When I move back to the UK next month I’m looking forward to joining this conversation and helping to shape the future of the pension landscape. Like many other countries the UK is ripe for consolidation and innovation.

I’m especially keen to explore how The PPF’s world class administrative and investment functions might be leveraged to the benefit of more members, sponsors, and the economy as a whole.

I suspect that we will be hearing much more from Michelle Ostermann and I like what I hear. Back when Nest was launched, there was much of the same hostility to its plans to move forward auto-enrolment saving as I hear today about the PPF’s plans to keep small schemes running on.

Nest is a success story as is the wider auto-enrolment savings business.

There are of course questions about the private/public boundary, but these are secondary to the ambition to offer those in DB schemes, of whatever size, the right to all of their pension.

In my view , the conversation that Michelle references is one that we should be as eager to have with her as she with us.