Investment Consultant

Job ref: 224276

Grade: Principal - Advisory Grade 6

**About us**:
More than half the UK working population rely on The Pensions Regulator (TPR) to regulate their retirement savings. With a career at TPR, you’ll be joining an organisation that will impact on millions of lives for decades to come.

Everyone at TPR plays an important role in helping to keep more than £2 trillion of savings safe. We’re committed to bringing people into TPR who are ready to make a difference and put UK savers at the heart of what we do.

It is important to us that TPR remains a great place to work. We do all we can to help our people reach their full potential with learning, secondment, and development opportunities. We put our 900+ employees first, supporting flexible working and offer a diverse, lively, and inclusive environment. This includes our Disability Network, Family Network, LGBT+ Network (Proud), Minority Ethnic (ME) Network and Women’s Network, which offer spaces to connect.

Our new corporate strategy outlines a bold and challenging vision of how pensions regulation should evolve to keep pace with a change in the scale and nature of the industry. We are at the start of that journey. Join us to find out what part you can play.

We operate a hybrid working model, with regular attendance in our Brighton office to connect with colleagues across the business.

**Role**:
In Market Oversight, our focus is to build a deep understanding of both market-wide and individual schemes’ risks and opportunities so that we can protect, enhance and innovate in savers’ interests.

Master Trust and DC Supervision brings together multi-disciplinary teams - with experts in governance, investments, business analysis, law and more - to address individual scheme level risks, as well as those which could impact the wider financial ecosystem. Our focus is on schemes delivering real value with an emphasis on governance, investments, data quality/standards, and innovation, putting the saver at the heart of everything we do.

We are looking for people who can help us build strong ongoing relationships with pension schemes, their employers and their administrators; in addition to working across teams internally to help develop frameworks and monitoring to support our market-wide oversight.

**Responsibilities**:
You will be expected to do a range of investment work to support TPR’s objectives, to be agreed depending on your particular skills, interests and experience. This may include:

- building and maintaining relationships with the relevant contacts at schemes
- developing an understanding of your schemes’ investment arrangements and future changes
- identifying, analysing and managing investment (and other) risks, devising and implementing interventions and contributing to the ongoing development of the DC investment risk framework
- working collaboratively with colleagues in your segment and account teams on the schemes you are accountable for, as well as other DC investment consultants
- developing investment policy and guidance on areas of emerging legislation, such as CDC, value for money, decumulation, consolidation, productive finance and climate change
- advising on schemes’ investment strategies (DC / Master Trusts)
- working on policy and supervisory frameworks for DC, CDC and Master Trust schemes
- supporting TPR’s investment modelling capabilities
- providing training to wider TPR colleagues on investment issues and developments
- sharing investment knowledge with other TPR investment consultants and more widely within TPR as appropriate
- communicating TPR’s position on MT supervision internally and externally

**Essential and desirable criteria**:
**Essential**:

- Up-to-date knowledge of workplace pension fund investment.
- Experience of working with workplace pension funds on investment issues.
- Communication and influencing skills at all levels of seniority.
- Commitment to TPR’s values and a professional approach to work.

**Desirable**:

- In-depth knowledge of DC investment and/or DB investment strategy.
- A network of contacts across the pensions and/or regulatory landscape.
- Experience in emerging policy areas, such as private markets or decumulation.
- Presentation skills.
- Relevant professional qualification such as CFA, FIA, FFA, CISI or similar.

**Person specification**:

- Passionate about pensions and interested in current and emerging investment issues, including Master Trusts, CDC, value for money, decumulation, consolidation, productive finance and climate change.
- Proactive and flexible.
- Can-do approach.
- Ability to prioritise and use initiative (pragmatism).
- Communication skills at all levels.
- Personable and a team player (knowledge sharing, consistency in approach, providing views and expert input on work others are involved with, promoting the team's capabilities and reputation).

**Salary and benefits**:
As well as a salary between £80,513 to £102,876 per annum, we offer:

- Civil Service Pensi