Pitching to solve the Pensions Crisis

Last Tuesday 21st May 2013 was KPI Pitch Fest the last part of the Daniel Priestly Key Person of Influence Course. The judges were led by the iconic Mike Harris, Daniel Priestly, James Paton-Philip from Pinsent Masons, Sally Preston Founder & Managing Director at The Kids Food Company ltd, Jenny Campbell CEO at YourCash and Steve Henry Co-founder at Decoded. Thank you for an incredible opportunity and a great evening. Well done to pitch fest winner – Liz Marsh and fellow runner-ups Hannah Foxley, Karen Bailey and Viv Grant and A Rafael Dos Santos. Below I have shared my pitch from pitch fest.

Hi I am Rob Gardner, co-founder and CEO of Redington. We advise 10 of the top 25 pension funds in the UK and we are building Redington into a global force in the pensions industry. We do 3 things. We (1) Design, (2) we Develop and (3) we Deliver investment strategies for large pension funds around the world. Our mission is to ensure that the next generation can continue to be better off than the last.

Over the last 7 years Redington has helped pension funds with over £270 billion in assets to repair their pensions deficit and improve member security. One of our clients is already over several hundred million pounds better off as a result of our approach. The success of our clients and our advice has been recognised by several top industry awards.

We all know that pension provision is a global problem that threatens the stability of governments. Why? People are living longer and pension funds after a decade of poor investment performance don’t have enough money to meet their liabilities. Which means in the UK alone there are over 1 million pensioners living in poverty and in the future this will be much worse as over 1/3 of workers aged 40 – 60 do not have an adequate pension. This is further compounded by the fact that the average person on the street has never had any financial education and is left feeling clueless about what to do and how.

Redington is the only firm to provide a clear investment roadmap that helps pension funds achieve their goals; we have designed a solution called the 7 Steps to Full Funding™ to take them from where they are now to where they need to be to pay their members. Step 1 is about setting clear goals and objectives, steps 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 are about intelligent investment decision making and step 7 is about accountable and transparent ongoing monitoring. We can advise them on the actions they need to take or we can implement the changes for them.

This year, we expand geographically with clients in the US and Asia. Earlier this month we launched an implementation offering called “RedCIO” in order to take the investment complexity off our clients’ hands. In June we announce an exciting partnership with one of the largest asset custodians in the world to provide an online risk monitoring tool to be sold in the UK, and Europe. And this year we have successfully piloted our free financial education programme – RedStart – with several schools in East London. In the next five years’ we will be the leading investment consulting firm in the world; we will have shown the world that there is a way to solve the pensions crisis, to improve people’s quality of life in retirement and reduce the financial burden on the next generation. And all young people in the UK will receive free financial education to help them make better financial decisions.

My request is for introductions. First, introductions to trustees of a pension fund who are interested in finding a solution to repair their deficit. And second I would like to be introduced to teachers at schools in London who might be interested in free financial education

Thank You. I am Rob Gardner and I am known for leaving our clients feeling in control.