Scottish Widows has made four senior appointments to its investment leadership team into newly-created roles.
The company has appointed Matt Brennan to be its new head of asset allocation. Brennan, who joins in November, has worked in a range of roles, including hedge fund management at TCI to retail investment at AJ Bell. Scottish Widows says he brings a wealth of experience about capital market assumptions and strategic asset allocations.
Heather Coulson has been promoted to be Scottish Widows’ head of implementation & portfolio management, a role she will start in the new year. She joined the firm earlier in the year from Abrdn. Building upon Scottish Widows open-architecture approach, she will work with investment partners to ensure Scottish Widows customers can access the best best UK and global asset managers.
Mithesh Varsaniill will join in January as head of investment solutions. He joins from Mobius Life, where, as CIO he specialised in creating bespoke investment solutions for institutional pension investors.
Finally Mark Gillan joins as head of operations from Valu-Trac, where as head of product governance, he was responsible for oversight across a wide range of investment funds, run by third-party managers. Gillan has previous worked for both Winterflood and AJ Bell, where he led product teams during periods of rapid growth and brings experience of large-scale technology deployment in complex environments. He will also start this new role in January 2025.
All will report into Scottish Widows chief investment officer Kevin Doran.
Doran says: “The addition of Matt, Heather, Mithesh and Mark to our investment leadership team is a real coup for the business. Combined with our existing leaders, these appointments will help us bring our customers access to the best investment opportunities from across Britain and around the world.
“We are already trusted to look after more than £200 billion of our six million customers’ retirement savings, annuities and multi-asset portfolios. With our enhanced team, reach and scale, we’ll use our expertise to guide our customers’ investments and help them financially prepare for their family’s future.”