Standard Life Independent Governance Committee

Dr David Hare

Independent Chair

David Hare has over 30 years of experience in the UK insurance industry. He qualified as an actuary in 1988 and has held various actuarial, marketing and financial risk management roles in a number of life insurers, including 5 years as Chief Actuary, UK & Europe at Standard Life.

From 2012 to 2017, he was a partner at Deloitte, specialising in actuarial audit and review work, including providing Independent Expert reports to the Court on the policyholder impact of five different inter-company transfers of insurance business. Having retired from Deloitte, he now holds a number of non-executive roles with UK insurance companies.

David was President of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) from June 2013 until June 2014. Prior to becoming the President-Elect of the IFoA in June 2012, he was a non-executive member of the then Board of Actuarial Standards of the Financial Reporting Council (from January 2010).

He was a member of the Independent Project Board that oversaw the ABI’s audit of the legacy pension schemes identified by the OFT as being at risk of being poor value for money, whose December 2014 report included a number of recommendations for IGCs to follow.

Ingrid Kirby

Independent Member

Ingrid is an independent professional trustee and investment specialist with Capital Cranfield Pension Trustees Ltd, after 30 years' experience of pension fund investment including 25 years working at Hermes Investment Management for the BT Pension Scheme and other third party clients.

She now has a portfolio of trustee roles acting as Sole Trustee, Chair of Trustees, and Co-Trustee encompassing large and small DB/DC arrangements in both commercial and not-for-profit organisations, bringing extensive and in-depth investment expertise to trustee boards and their Investment and DC sub-committees.

She was an independent member of the previous SLAL IGC from outset. She is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment and a member of the Association of Professional Pension Trustees.

Sheila Gunn

Independent Member

Sheila is an experienced independent non-executive director. Sheila left legal private practice in 2009 to pursue a management career in industry and undertake non-executive appointments. Her first assignment was with Ignis Asset Management, to work on the merger of two asset management businesses within the Phoenix Group.

Sheila is currently Group Vice-Chair of the Wheatley Group and Chair of Wheatley Solutions. Her other non-executive appointments include the Accounts Commission, Council of the Chartered Banker Institute, Lowther Homes Limited and the Ethics Board of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Scotland.

Mike Christophers

Independent Member

Mike is an independent member of the IGC and has worked in the insurance industry with an involvement in pensions for over 40 years both with insurance companies and employee benefit advisers.

He is currently Chairman of Mobius Life a platform for Occupational Pension Scheme assets and a Non-Executive Director of Forester Life. He was a partner of KPMG and lead the development of the Insurance Consulting practice. He also served for many years on the Boards of Lloyds Bank Insurance businesses including Scottish Widows.

Michael Craig

Michael joined Standard Life as a trainee actuary in 1986 and has held a number of management positions over the past 33 years, including head of product and technical consultancy.

Outside of Standard Life, he has been the trustee chair of the ABI staff pension scheme and he is currently a non-executive director of the Royal Blind.

Mike Pennel

Company Representative

Mike is a qualified actuary who has been with the Phoenix Group for over 25 years having originally joined Britannic Assurance. His current role is focused on strategy and planning within the life companies of the Group and supporting various projects including those related to integrating businesses acquired by the Group.

Mike previously worked in Finance and was responsible for financial planning and forecasting. He also has experience in product development and a variety of projects including some of the group's early acquisitions and restructuring activities and therefore has a broad experience across the business.