Emma Douglas looks set to take over as chair of the Pensions Regulator (TPR) after being named as the Government’s preferred candidate, ahead of a pre-appointment hearing later this month.
Douglas will appear before the Work and Pensions Committee on Wednesday, 14 January, a standard step in the appointment process. She is currently non-executive chair of Pensions UK and wealth policy director at Aviva.
The pre-appointment hearing will allow MPs to test Douglas’ suitability for the role and explore her priorities as she prepares to take on the chairmanship of the UK’s workplace pensions watchdog. The chair is responsible for setting TPR’s strategic direction, maintaining relationships with ministers and industry and holding the regulator’s executive team to account.
The appointment comes as the regulator’s role is under scrutiny following major policy developments, including the Pension Schemes Bill, the establishment of the Pensions Commission and the pensions dashboards programme.
The regulator has also faced criticism from MPs in recent years. A predecessor Work and Pensions Committee concluded in 2024 that “two decades of regulatory policy caution [had] almost entirely destroyed the UK’s defined benefit system”, following earlier criticism of TPR’s oversight of liability-driven investment strategies ahead of the LDI crisis.
Committee members may use the hearing to press Douglas on lessons learned from that period and how she would approach regulation differently as chair.
The Committee will report its findings to the Government but pre-appointment hearings are not binding.