David C John

Helen Dean

I spent an afternoon with Standard Life yesterday learning about its mastertrust and developments in its employer and employee facing proposition.

The pleasure of the day was marked by meeting two old friends, David John – a Virginian who looks and sounds the gentlemen of the American South and Helen Dean , now Chair of Standard Life Mastertrust’s trustees and our first Lady of Newcastle. The tone of the event was set by their contributions on an early panel and maintained through the afternoon.

David is so nonchalant with his “bon mots” that they can go unmissed. What did VFM means for him?

“Performance after fees”

That’s the distillation of 100,000 words of consultation!

I am of an age with these venerable people and chatting with Dean over a drink at the end , we admitted that much of the innovation we heard of, was for and from a generation we will not be part of. The baton of innovation with regards technology has been exchanged!

But it was encouraging to hear that that Helen’s  and David’s focus remains where it should be, not on the entitled people who have financial and advisory resource to have financial wellbeing in later years, but the majority of the population who don’t. For them a pension is a wage for life and Standard life know it.

Though the energy in the room was being generated by new generations , it was good to see John Greenwood and David Harris at the event. They too know the difference between a pot and a pension!

If Helen is the consumer’s champ, Gurmukh Hayre is the employer’s. Gurmukh has recently been Chair of Centrica’s Trustees and joins the Standard Life board as someone who understand pensions from both a DB and DC perspective. I predict that the two will increasingly work together – Centrica is a hybrid pension schemes with a Standard Life DC engine. The appointment of Hayre and Dean to the Mastertrust board is a shrewd move.

Much is said at events such as this about “engagement”, but in a matter as important as pensions , you cannot have engagement without trust. People are blindly engaging with the state pension , often trying to buy extra pension when they can’t. Meanwhile many private pensions find voluntary contributions as rare as hen’s teeth. We sometimes forget the power of a brand, Phoenix is not yet a consumer brand, Standard Life has been for 200 years.

It was also good to see some familiar faces from the world of consultancy. Stephanie Coventry should be congratulated for her work securing Seimens as a new participating employer, Michael Ambery and Cullum Stewart, for their work chairing the event. Emma Furlonger for her unswerving enthusiasm for everything.

There is a particular intelligence about Standard Life’workplace proposition which comes, I think, from it having such strong female intelligence. Led by Gail Izat with Donna Walsh at the helm of the Master Trust, it is supported by the retirement proposition, itself led by Claire (Clara) Altman and Esther Hawkins. Looking back at my career in an insurer, I realise how our work would have been enhanced by that female intelligence.

I guess I find people more interesting than panels and the content of the event was more focused on connecting advisers to Standard Life’s view of pensions than pushing the boundaries of the possible. But herein lies Standard Life’s potential. Currently , its mastertrust is middle ranking in terms of assets – it needs to double in size to catch up to where Legal & General are today and double again before it can be said to have achieved the scale of £50bn , envisaged as “sustainable” by the DWP.

In the past, I have criticised Standard Life for being aloof and disconnected from the mainstream, indeed they have let commercial rivals such as People’s , LifeSight and L&G steal a march. But this is a very new Standard Life that is clearly promoting its master trust rather than its GPP, its employer and consumer proposition, rather than pandering to intermediaries.

Although it is tough for the old-guard to accept, Standard is now benefiting from being a British rather than a Scottish company, its parent Phoenix is clearly clearing out the parochialism of the Standard Life of the past and it now has the look and feel of a company on the front foot.

It is about time. Standard Life has underperformed; it ran aground because of GARS, faltered in its strategy on auto-enrolment and could easily have been lost as a brand as have so many of the mutuals of the twentieth century. But it has come through and is now a force in the land.

I am very pleased to report it.