A Trustee Accelerator Programme run by Standard Life launches this week, with Nest as an external participant fund. The provider said the first intake of trustee trainees come from “a wide variety of personal and professional backgrounds", hoping they will better reflect scheme memberships.  

The programme is run in partnership with the Pensions Management Institute and attracted “significant interest” since it was first announced last November, according to Standard Life. Twelve candidates were selected following a recruitment process.  

The provider said a key focus of its programme is to increase diversity and inclusion among pension trustees, so they are more reflective of the scheme members they represent. Trainees will have access to learning, board shadowing and mentoring, and relevant qualifications to become a trustee.  

Donna Walsh, who founded the Trustee Accelerator Programme and is head of master trust at Standard Life, said the trainees bring diverse experiences and backgrounds, offering the potential to improve the governance and management of pension schemes. She called on other providers to consider setting up similar programmes.  

“If the level of interest we have had in the programme from candidates and industry peers is reflective of a desire to make the pension industry more equitable and inclusive, then I believe this programme is a small but important step in the right direction to make pensions more representative of savers from across the UK,” she said.  

“Even though selecting the 12 trainees was made more difficult by the calibre of the candidates, we’ve assembled a group of trainees from scientific research, AI and data, banking, fashion and cosmetics, and telecommunications’ backgrounds and combined them with participants from other non-pensions disciplines at both Standard Life and Phoenix Group. I’m looking forward to seeing them develop over the next two years and emerge trustee-ready in spring 2026.” 

Defined contribution master trust Nest is the programme’s first external partner, creating a bespoke mentoring and board shadowing opportunity for a trainee participant.    

Chair of Nest Brendan McCafferty said Nest has more than 13m members, many on low to middle incomes. 

“We’re working hard to deliver good outcomes for each of those members. Our Nest board thrives on diversity of thought and experience. We want to build on this to support good governance for our members, but also to help build the next generation of trustees to help increase diversity across trustee boards in the wider pensions industry."  

The Pensions Regulator’s trustee D&I survey, conducted in summer 2023 among 2,197 trustees and public service scheme pension board members, shows the typical trustee is “a white man who is over 45”. Compared with the UK census, trustees are markedly less likely to include people under 45, people with disabilities, women and those of faiths other than a Christian faith or non-religious people.  

 

However, respondents said most trustee boards are diverse in terms of skills (82%), life experience (74%), professional background (73%), cognitive diversity (73%) and education (61%).