Royal London appoints customer to governance committee

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Royal London appoints customer to governance committee

Royal London has appointed a customer to its independence governance committee, in what it claims is an industry first.

The new committee member, Myles Edwards, is a Royal London pension policyholder and employee of Foresters Friendly Society.

On 6 April 2015, the Financial Conduct Authority made it mandatory for pension schemes provided by life companies to have an independent governance committee - or IGC - to provide a similar service to that provided by trustees of trust-based pension schemed.

However, appointing a customer to the IGC is not mandatory, and Royal London claimed it was the first company to do so.

The firm described its decision  as a "market leading initiative meeting one of the regulator’s key requirements for IGCs, to act in the interests of workplace pension customers to assess the ongoing value for money offered by workplace pensions".

Mr Myles said his appointment to the IGC would "ensure that the customer perspective is fully taken into account in assessing the value for money of workplace pensions for Royal London customers".  

Phil Green, independent chair of the Royal London IGC, said in its first year the committee had worked "collaboratively" with Royal London to "understand the products and services that they offer to their existing and future workplace pension customers".

This, he said, resulted in a number of improvements benefitting over 27,000 customers at a cost of over £15 million. 

He added: "However, in our second year we wanted to do more work to understand the voice of the customer, and we see the appointment of a Royal London customer to the Committee as a key part of this achieving this.”

james.fernyhough@ft.com