Lloyds Bank Pension Hires Strategy Chief
Lloyds Banking Group has hired The Pensions Trust’s CIO David Adkins as head of investment strategy for its internal team.
Adkins will join the UK-based team—which runs roughly £32 billion ($41.4 billion) across a number of funds—at the start of next month, the pension confirmed to CIO. He spent six years at the helm of The Pensions Trust, a multi-employer fund catering chiefly for the charity sector, responsible for its £7 billion investment portfolio.
At Lloyds, Adkins will report to CIO Ian McKinlay, who is building a new investment team after joining a year ago from insurance company Aviva. The team is responsible for Lloyds Bank’s two defined benefit funds and another linked to its 2009 purchase of Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS).
Adkins replaces Steve McMillan, who left in March for hedge fund BlueMountain Capital Management.
Before joining The Pensions Trust in 2010, Adkins was an investment consultant at what is now Willis Towers Watson for 12 years. He previously spent 10 years at Buck Consultants.
Larissa Benbow, who led HBOS’ pension investments, and Simon Lee, who held a similar role for the Lloyds funds, both left the group in the first half of last year amid a raft of changes. Benbow has since joined AustralianSuper, while Lee is now CIO at high street chain Marks & Spencer’s pension fund.
Earlier this year, Lloyds overhauled its governance structure, replacing three trustee boards for its three main pensions with one single board. Among its nine members are Sally Bridgeland, former CIO of the BP Pension Scheme, and independent trustees Jocelyn Blackwell and Mark Ashworth.
The Pensions Trust is yet to announce a replacement for Adkins. Last month it hired Emmanuel Bocquet and John Steel from Aerion Fund Management, the in-house asset manager for National Grid which was sold to Legal & General earlier this year. Bocquet is portfolio strategist, while Steel is investment operations manager.