Josef Pilger

Josef has 19 years of experience with EY in various roles. He currently leads the global pension and retirement practice at the company and was previously the pension practice leader for the Asia-Pacific region. Prior to joining EY, he was a member of the Executive Committee of the Helaba Pension Trust, in Frankfurt, Germany, a bank-owned superannuation master trust for medium and large corporates.

He says his experience at Helaba Pension Trust helped to shape how he approaches consulting. “Having worked on the other side, I see a lot of different roles for the consultant. Consultants, obviously, provide knowledge and expertise, but they can also help organizations execute on change,” he explains. For Pilger, the consultants that stand out are the ones that are willing to take a proactive role in helping clients find solutions. In his own work, he likes to try to find ways of being involved that might be unique but ultimately bring strategic value to his client relationships.

Finding the right mix of business savvy and technology is also critical to helping organizations execute on their ideas, Pilger notes. “As the gig economy becomes more commonplace, it will be important for consultants to be agile enough to work with small organizations and help them find solutions. We’re used to thinking about organizations with hundreds of people, but the future is probably more like hundreds of organizations with maybe five or 10 people.” Technology can help with some of that, but it will also require finding advisory partners who have helped small organizations grow and manage change, he adds.