Gail Izat has been promoted to chief operating officer for Standard Life’s pensions & savings business.
This newly created role follows Standard Life’s acquisition of Aegon UK and Izat will be tasked with overseeing the companies ambitious plans for the pensions and savings pensions. This covers its workplace business as well as its retail direct and intermediary channels.
In this role she will lead the delivery of the unit’s strategy, transformation, integration and risk activity.
Izat has been managing director for workforce since 2019 and more recently took on responsibility for the retail intermediary channel. Emma Furlonger will take over these roles on an interim basis. Furlonger has worked with Izat since 2021 most recently as workplace trading director.
In total Standard Life managers around £212bn of pension and savings assets. The company says that its workplace business continues to be strategically important for the company.
Last year its workplace business recorded net inflows of £5.3bn and added nearly 250,000 new customers.
Earlier this week the private markets specialist Future Growth Capital – a joint venture between Standard Life and Schroders – announced that Gail Izat would be a non-executive director on its board.
Standard Life CEO of pensions & savings Angela Byrne says: “These appointments are a recognition of the impact that both have made at Standard Life.
“Under Izat’s leadership Standard Life has become a top three player in workplace and has set out a clear direction for our retail intermediary offer.
“In her new role she will look more broadly at how we deliver the pensions and savings strategy for our 12 million customers.
We have a clear ambition to consolidate our leading position in the workplace market and become a top five player in retail – these appointments will be central to those goals.”
