Aviva Appoints Replacement as McKinlay Exits CIO Role

A Forty Under Forty alum has stepped up to fill the top role at the UK insurer’s staff pension, while AXA IM has tapped a rival asset manager for a key sales position.

Aviva has promoted Steven Catchpole to pension investment director in its UK staff pension following the exit of Ian McKinlay.

Catchpole was previously head of investments at the £14.7 billion ($22.6 billion) pension, reporting to McKinlay. He joined from consulting firm Cardano in 2013. Prior to Cardano, Catchpole spent eight years as an investment consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Catchpole is also a member of CIO’s Forty Under Forty, joining the list this year. He takes over a pension fund running a healthy £2.7 billion surplus, according to Aviva’s 2014 annual report.

McKinlay left the insurance giant to take charge of the Lloyds and HBOS pension funds. His exit from Aviva was revealed in July. A Power 100 alum, he is a former CIO of the Pension Protection Fund, the UK’s lifeboat fund for defined benefit pensions.

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Elsewhere, AXA Investment Managers has hired Rob Barrett to lead its institutional sales in the UK. Barrett joins from Invesco, where he was also head of institutional sales. He has held similar roles at Swisscanto and HSBC Global Asset Management, and was head of European marketing at AXA’s quantitative investment arm Rosenberg for four years until 2008.