Your trustee directors
The Trustee Board is responsible for the running of the Fund. Find out more about its work.
The Trustee Board is made up of six Company-appointed Trustee Directors, including an independent Chairman, a Director nominated by the Central Negotiating Committee (CNC), and four member-nominated Directors.
The current Trustee Directors are:
Liz Airey
Independant Chairman
Jo Durkan
Company appointed,
Assistant Treasurer, Derby
Iain Foster
Company appointed,
Commercial Director Civil,
Derby
Stuart Hedley
CNC nominated,
Manufacturing Engineer,
Solihull
Will Mansfield
Company appointed, former
Group Chief Accountant,
Derby
Jeremy Bragg
Company appointed, Senior
Vice President, Investor
Relations, London
Paul Butler
Member nominated,
pensioner
Mark Barron
Member nominated,
Manufacturing Engineer,
Washington
Colin High
Member nominated,
pensioner
Mark Porter
Member nominated, Works
Convenor / Chair of UK
Council, Rolls-Royce plc,
Barnoldswick
Trustee Directors serve four-year terms with a maximum of two terms before rotating off the Board.
Steve Jones stepped down from the Board as the CNC-nominated Trustee Director on 31 December 2023, being replaced by Stuart Hedley. Jane Stockwell also left the Board as a Company-appointed Trustee Director on 15 March 2024, being replaced by Jeremy Bragg.
In respect of our member-nominated Trustee Directors, Paul Butler began his second term of office on 1 December 2023. Colin High retired from the Company and the Fund on 31 March 2024 but continues as a Pensioner Trustee Director.
Over the year to 31 March 2024, the Trustee Board held four main board meetings. In addition, Trustee Directors sit on the following standing committees and working parties that assist with the governance of the Fund:
INVESTMENT IMPLEMENTATION & FUNDING COMMITTEE
This committee supports the Trustee in identifying opportunities to reduce risk, monitoring the financial impacts of climate change on the Fund, and reviews investment governance processes.
AUDIT & RISK COMMITTEE
Responsible for the formal annual report and financial statements, internal controls, risk management and mitigation processes.
NOMINATIONS AND GOVERNANCE COMMITTEE
This committee is responsible for the appointment of member-nominated Directors and overseeing the Trustee Board’s governance arrangements.
COMMUNICATIONS WORKING PARTY
This is a joint working party with the Rolls-Royce Retirement Savings Trust. It’s responsible for agreeing all member communications, including this newsletter.
DISCRETIONS COMMITTEE
This committee deals with all cases where Trustee discretion is required, such as settling death benefits.
EQUALISATION WORKING PARTY
Working to address any outstanding benefit equalisation issues.
Trustee Directors are expected to sit on at least two of these committees as well as attending main Board meetings.
Advisers to the Trustee Board
The Board is assisted by these professional advisers:
Fund actuary - Leanne Johnston FIA
Mercer Limited
Auditor
Deloitte LLP
Legal adviser
Linklaters LLP
Investment consultant
Mercer Limited
The Trustee regularly reviews the performance of its appointed advisers and service providers.
Trustee remuneration
Six of our Trustee Directors are current Rolls-Royce employees and serve on the Trustee Board without additional pay, but are given time and support to attend meetings.
The Trustee Board’s Chair, who is an independent appointment with no other connection to Rolls-Royce, and three of our member-nominated Trustees, representing deferred and pensioner members of the Fund, are paid a fee for performing their roles. The Company sets the remuneration policy for the Trustee Board.
The fee paid to the Chair is determined by benchmarking the position against similar independent Trustee Chair positions. The Fund pays a fee of between £5,000 and £5,500 a year to our pensioner Trustee Directors and £30,000 a year to our deferred Trustee Director, which reflects his additional role as chairman of our Audit & Risk Committee.
In setting these amounts, the Company has considered the time commitment required and best practice within the pensions industry. Please refer to our Trustee Remuneration Policy for more information.
Cyber security update
Computer systems and personal data are constantly under threat of being targeted by criminals. You’ll be aware of this already, with daily spam texts and emails encouraging you to click on links and weekly news stories about data breaches affecting big organisations.
The Trustee takes its cyber security responsibilities very seriously. In common with other pension schemes, we legitimately hold a lot of your personal data, and we continue to review our practices and procedures to make sure we’re up to date.
In our previous newsletter, we told you we were implementing the recommendations of the cyber security review carried out by our internal audit partners, Ernst & Young. All of these recommendations have now been fully implemented.
As the threat is always evolving, Ernst & Young have recently completed a review of our record keeping, benefit calculations and migration of the pension administration system to a cloud-based environment. Their recommendations are currently being implemented.
In addition, Rolls-Royce’s internal cyber security team have performed an in-depth audit of our systems, specifically covering member benefits, payments and cash management. No concerns were noted in their report, which commented that, ‘The Fund demonstrates strong organisational security practices and aligns with corporate cyber security policies. It is evident that the pension scheme has made progress in addressing cyber security, including the initiation of scheme-specific security policies.’