Vanessa has experience advising clients across the full spectrum of UK pensions matters and some global issues.
Vanessa is a Legal Director in our London Pensions group with almost 20 years' pensions experience. She has a wide range of employer and trustee clients and advises in relation to some of the largest pension schemes in the UK.
She has experience advising on general day-to-day matters such as individual member and technical queries, as well as larger projects such as de-risking solutions, mergers, governance reviews, corporate restructurings, benefit changes, funding negotiations, wind-ups and PPF/FAS assessments.
Vanessa spent a year on secondment at the Pensions Regulator assisting in the development of the Code of Practice on Trustee Knowledge and Understanding and the associated guidance documents.
Vanessa's recent projects include:
- establishing a large defined benefit master trust
- strategic advice on funding negotiations and corporate restructuring
- multiple scheme mergers
- closing to future accrual
- advice to insurers on multibillion-pound buyouts
- a consolidated, plain English, rules rewrite for a notionally sectionalized scheme with 12 benefit sections
- governance reviews
- strategic advice to employers on the implementation of automatic enrollment
- Regular presenter at various public and client conferences and events across the UK and Ireland
- Regular speaker at training sessions for trustees, employers and junior pensions lawyers
- Has written articles for the pensions press
- Member, International Sub-committee of the Association of Pension Lawyers
- Associate Member, Pensions Management Institute
- Advanced Diploma in Retirement Provision, Pensions Management Institute, January 2009
- Diploma in International Employee Benefits, Pensions Management Institute, December 2008
- Diploma in Legal Practice, Nottingham Law School, 2001-2002
- LLB (Hons) in Law, University of Sheffield, 1998-2001