Pensions and Retirement Planning Conference 2026

Charlotte Clark CBE has been the Director of Cross-Cutting Policy and Strategy at the FCA since November 2024. Her team leads on areas such as Consumer Duty, Vulnerability, Redress and Prudential Policy, Pensions as well as areas such as the development of policy for AI.

Prior to this Charlotte was the Director of Regulation at ABI, leading on areas such as Solvency II reform and the ESG. Her background is in the civil service where she had senior roles in HMT, DWP and DfE including being the Director for Private Pensions at DWP.

Liz joined PIMFA (then known as the Wealth Management Association) as Chief Executive in 2014.

She has 30 years financial services experience, 20 of which as a Chief Executive. She successfully transformed and advised several businesses through redefining strategy, re-branding, change management and inspirational leadership, creating profitable businesses.

She has substantive experience of people and corporate culture risk, regulatory knowhow across the industry – banking, insurance and wealth management and providing good practice guidelines for the industry to adopt.
She is an accredited coach and industry leader encouraging collaborative participation of diverse groups of industry experts to address sector challenges and to leverage industry resources for collective benefit.

Liz holds a degree in Psychology and a Masters in Occupational Psychology from Birkbeck.

Simon joined PIMFA in November 2017 as a Senior Policy Adviser with a focus on public policy and long term savings. He has previously worked at the National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) and the Treasury in a variety of roles working on a number of issues including automatic enrolment, pension freedoms and the UK’s response to the financial crisis.

Simon has a strong interest in long term savings issues with a particular focus on overcoming behavioural barriers and the support structures that can be put in place in order to help and encourage a thriving savings culture in the UK.

Andrea was appointed CEO of Brooks Macdonald in October 2024, having joined in August 2023 as Chief Financial Officer, bringing an impressive track record and experience of operating at Board and Executive level across the UK long-term savings and asset management sector.

Her previous roles include Group Chief Risk Officer and Group Chief Financial Controller at Aviva. Prior to that, Andrea held senior leadership roles including Deputy Group CFO at Royal London and Group Chief Internal Auditor at Standard Life plc. She began her career at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where she qualified as a chartered accountant.

Richard Parkin is the Head of UK Retirement for T. Rowe Price. Richard is based in London and works with the firm’s distribution and investment teams in supporting clients with the design, development and implementation of retirement investment solutions and associated propositions. He also acts as a spokesperson on retirement for the firm in the UK.

Richard joined the firm in March 2026 having started his career as a defined contribution investment consultant in 1991 before moving into asset management. He has held senior product development and policy positions with UBS Global Asset Management and Fidelity International. More recently he was head of retirement at BNY Investments having spent 5 years running his own strategy consultancy.

Richard has a degree in mathematics from the University of Warwick. He is also a non-executive director and Deputy Chair of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme and chairs the Investment Association’s Retirement Income Committee.

James joined St James’s Place Wealth Management as CEO in April 2025. Prior to taking his current role, James was at Schroders from 2007, most recently as Head of UK, CEO of Schroder Unit Trusts Ltd. and a member of Schroders’ Group Management Committee.

During this career at Schroders James had a number of roles including, CEO of Schroders Personal Wealth, Schroders’ joint venture with Lloyds Banking Group, Co-Head of UK Intermediary and Head of UK Financial Institutions and Strategic Accounts. James also served as a non-executive Director of Benchmark Capital, which is a financial adviser network, platform and technology business.

Prior to joining Schroders, James worked in various Distribution and Marketing roles at Baring Asset Management (2001-2007) and John Govett (1996-2001). He has a BA from Kings College London.

Claire’s in-depth knowledge is diverse and wide ranging and has been born from a combination of having previously worked herself as a Financial Adviser, to now helping advisers deal with the complexities of advice in an ever-changing regulatory world.

In Claire’s capacity at St James’s Place, she continues to build on her ability to communicate with various audiences, internally and externally using a wide array of media and is a regular key spokesperson for the business.
In addition, Claire has in the past been Chair of the SIPP and SSAS trade body, the Association of Member-directed Pension Schemes (AMPS).

Gareth is a Partner in Eversheds Sutherland's Litigation & Arbitration Team, with 20+ years’ experience of working for financial services clients. A large part of his practice is dealing complaints and customer litigation, across a range of FS products and services.