THE new chief financial officer at pensions and insurance giant Standard Life started work in Edinburgh yesterday, joining the firm as it grapples with industry-wide changes to retirement savings.
Luke Savage has joined the firm from the Lloyd's of London insurance market, where he spent a decade as director of finance and operations.
His appointment was announced in May, two months after the government shocked the industry by allowing savers to spend their pension pots more freely rather than forcing them to buy an annuity and guarantee their income.
The rule change, which comes into force in April 2015, wiped some £5 billion from the stock market value of British insurers when it was announced in Chancellor George Osborne's budget speech.
Standard Life said its annuity sales fell 59 per cent in the wake of the government's announcement. However, it has expressed confidence that its other pension products will more than make up for the lost sales once pensioners reassess their options.
The Edinburgh-based company spent more than a year hunting for a new chief financial officer after Jackie Hunt left to join Prudential.
Mr Savage, a chartered accountant who trained with Price Waterhouse, has also worked for Lloyds Bank, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank.
He spent his first day meeting with staff and investors. As well as the annuities overhaul, Standard Life is also braced for the introduction of Solvency II, a Europe-wide set of insurance rules that has been beset by delays and alterations.
Mr Savage helped prepare Lloyd's of London for the rule change before the European Union pushed back the start date to 2016 at the earliest.
When his appointment was announced, Standard Life chief executive David Nish said Mr Savage was joining "at a time of significant opportunity with unprecedented change across the markets in which we operate".
His starting salary is £600,000 a year.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article