Team

Douglas is an entrepreneurial actuary, who provided the original inspiration for what we now know as Club Vita. His actuarial career spans thirty years: before focusing on longevity risk, Douglas advised trustees and corporate sponsors of final salary pension funds on funding and risk management issues.

Today, Douglas remains a hands-on leader to Club Vita, focussing his creative streak on the next opportunity for innovation and on sharing the benefits of Club Vita in Canada. 

Douglas is also a passionate advocate for the benefits of joined-up, enterprise risk management techniques. You can read his thoughts on how to apply ERM to longevity here. 

Away from the office, Douglas enjoys gardening, skiing and cycling. 

Steven has led the design and development of Club Vita’s longevity informatics tools from the inception of the Club, having developed his skills in the field of liability-driven investing. He has a passion for developing new insights, and an encyclopaedic knowledge of all things longevity related.  

Steven’s time is primarily spent improving our leading-edge longevity solutions; including responsibility for leading a team of statisticians and actuaries in analysing predictors of longevity and the emerging trends in later life mortality within Club Vita. 

Steven is a prolific contributor to longevity debates within the UK actuarial profession via academic papers, publications and seminar presentations. He has recently co-authored, with Douglas Anderson, a chapter on longevity risk management for the Palgrave Handbook of Unconventional Risk Transfer.

Once a keen cyclist and runner, most of his free time now is spent being used as a climbing frame by his young sons and the family dog.

Steve guides all our new members through the initial on-boarding process, answering any question you may have. He is our resident guru on data protection.  

Before taking on the role of Membership Secretary Steve spent much of his time presenting the Club Vita findings to members – a role he continues to perform for many of our members.

Outside of work Steve is an amateur lumberjack. 

Conor has specialised in analysing longevity patterns for over 10 years, working with a wide range of pension schemes, insurers and reinsurers.

Conor is responsible for ensuring that the analytics members receive remains fresh and up to date. He has developed and maintains many of our longevity modelling tools. 

Outside of work Conor is a keen hockey player. 

James is responsible for our VitaCurves survival model.  He leads the annual re-calibration review process and develops the underlying statistical software.  James works closely with Steven Baxter and Conor O’Reilly to identify new insights from Club Vita’s data.

James has recently qualified as an actuary and is now enjoying weekends free of studying by playing the piano, reading and trying to keep (relatively) fit by playing football, golf and squash.

Mark began his career in private sector pensions consulting for both trustee and corporate clients before moving into the realms of longevity consultancy.

At Club Vita, Mark is responsible for communicating longevity insights to pensions schemes, insurers, advisors and asset managers to ensure they can harness the power of Club Vita analytics. Additionally, Mark is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways that Club Vita analytics can be used to solve problems and discusses our Club Vita risk management solutions at conferences and industry events.

Away from the office, Mark can be found countless shots over par on the golf course, watching sport or channelling his inner Gordon Ramsey in the kitchen.

Erik is a consulting actuary with a wide range of pension and benefits experience having transitioned into the wonderful world of actuarial science from his early career activity as a pure mathematician.

Erik now focuses on the communication of the wealth of Club Vita analytics with Club Vita supporters and is always looking for new ways to increase engagement with longevity issues. Erik also facilitates our Friends of Club Vita discussion group on LinkedIn. 

At the weekend (mainly in the summer), Erik enjoys juggling in the park and is a former British street performing champion.

Nick is an experienced longevity risk specialist, providing analysis to support decision-making by pension schemes, insurers and reinsurers. His background is in pensions and he is a qualified actuary with over 10 years of pensions experience and has previously held a Scheme Actuary certificate.

Nick spends much of his time out meeting Club members, providing trustee presentations on the latest Club Vita findings.

In his spare time, Nick is a keen cricketer – and is a former world champion at ice cricket.

Chuyi’s work in the Vita team includes calibrating our VitaCurves, developing statistical research models to deliver insights, and exploring new tools to add to our technical capabilities.

In her spare time, Chuyi enjoys keeping active with badminton, playing board games, and trying out new recipes in the kitchen (with varying degrees of success).

Dan joined Club Vita having switched from an early career designing submarines and ejection seats as an engineer.

Dan now works on developing innovation and analytics within Club Vita.  This involves developing models to predict longevity, calibrating our VitaCurves, and identifying insights from Club Vita’s data

 In his free time, Dan enjoys playing football, running around parks and climbing up walls.

Darren recently joined the team after studying economics at university.

Darren works with within the research team maintaining VitaCurves statistical models and identifying insights from Club Vita’s data.

In his spare time Darren likes reading, watching too much tv and running.

Claire recently joined the team as a longevity modeller, after switching from a career as a financial engineer.

 Claire works with the VitaCurves model to provide statistical insights into the Club Vita dataset and build on the longevity analytics tools that Club Vita utilises.

 Outside of work, she enjoys playing tennis, badminton and skiing.

Matthew leads our team processing and analysing the data received from Club members. He works closely with pension scheme administrators to help ensure that the process of providing data to Club Vita is as simple as possible.

Matthew has experience in both third-party and in-house defined benefit pensions administration prior to joining Club Vita.

Matthew also plays acoustic guitar in his spare time. 

Kirsty is an experienced longevity analyst. She works closely with a number of our schemes with the most challenging data histories to ensure that they receive the best possible insights from the data. 

Kirsty joined Club Vita team in its formative years, bringing a wealth of pension administrator experience from Aon and Scottish Mutual.

Kirsty is kept busy after work and at the weekends with her horse Gem.

Amanda works closely with a number of our schemes, processing member data and producing annual reports which provide our schemes with the latest insights from our data set. 

Amanda has a number of years’ experience in third-party pensions administration prior to joining Club Vita.

Amanda loves to travel and is always planning her next holiday. 

Fraser works closely with a number of our schemes, analysing member data and creating annual reports to provide our schemes with the latest insights from our data set. 

Fraser had over 15 years’ experience in third party defined benefit administration prior to joining Club Vita.

Fraser enjoys music and is currently learning to play the bagpipes.

Maria provides valuable support to the longevity analysts in the preparation of Club Vita reports and also performs finance administration and document management for the Club.

Maria is an avid hillwalker and can often be found ‘bagging Munros’ at the weekend.

Karen advises Club Vita on its contracts and data protection responsibilities, enabling straightforward onboarding of new subscribers.

Karen previously advised Standard Life.  Her team bring experience from across financial services and other industries and include members of the Association of Pension Lawyers. 

Away from work, Karen is a keen diver.   

Blythe works closely with a number of our schemes, processing member data and producing annual reports which provide our subscribers with the latest insights from our data set.  Blythe joined Club Vita from Hymans Robertson’s Third Party Administration team where she gained her experience in defined benefit pension plans and data handling.

In her spare time Blythe can be found working out at the gym or at painting and pottery classes.