Pension guru on a mission

Mr John Feely is a man with a mission, a pensions mission. The new chairman of the Irish Association of Pension Funds (IAPF) has strong feelings about the role of the organisation which has €50 billion (£39 billion) under management. The IAPF represents the interests of scheme members, trustees and plan sponsors.

The 370 occupational pension schemes in the IAPF have 200,000 members and 70,000 pensioners but Mr Feely's interests go far beyond looking after his own members. "A key role of the IAPF is to promote financial security for all retired people. We don't want a situation where people in their 70s and 80s have not managed to build some kind of financial security for themselves.

The issue of long-term care is high on Mr Feely's agenda, and he feels particularly strongly about asset governance and shareholder rights.

The IAPF is responsible for providing guidelines about shareholders' voting rights, in Mr Feely's view. "What we are about is enhancing shareholder value and we should make it known if there is an issue."

The Irish Association of Investment Managers becomes involved in shareholders' rights and responsibilities from time to time as most schemes vest voting rights with fund managers.

But, according to Mr Feely, the IAPF should be in a position to give support to those responsible for the assets by highlighting what should be taken into consideration.

Within 20 years, long-term care will be a major issue and the IAPF has done much work on the matter, according to Mr Feely. He has personal experience of the need for long-term care and addressing the issue is a priority for him.

Together with the Society of Actuaries and the Pensions Board, the IAPF produced a report in 1998 entitled Financing Long Term Care in Ireland.

"We are looking to reconvene the same group that worked on the 1998 report. Discussions have taken place and we should be ready to report within three to four months."

Mr Feely is very interested in the research work the IAPF has done into the investment strategy for the National Pensions Reserve Fund.

"Not only is it significant that we have started pre-funding for future liability, but it will also be interesting to see how it develops as a fund. "We're very confident in the independence of establishing the investment strategy and believe it will act as an important benchmark."

In his 20-year career, Mr Feely has filled every possible professional role in the pensions area. From consulting actuary to investment manager and sales person to life assurance company manager, he is also a pension scheme trustee.

"I've seen things from different angles and there's great advantage in that." He is currently acting chief executive with the recently demutualised Scottish Provident and will be moving on to an interesting new group function soon.

Mr Feely describes his background as an ordinary, traditional Dublin one. He is the youngest of a family of six and grew up in the Navan Road area of north Dublin.

The local Christian Brothers school encouraged his flair for maths and he went on to get the magic `A' in the Leaving Certificate honours paper, which was his ticket into the actuary profession.

Leaving a place in computer science at Trinity College after just two weeks, Mr Feely took up a job and the chance to study to be an actuary with Irish Pensions Trust (IPT).

His first job was to process pension scheme renewals. These were the days before automation and there were two PCs for a staff of 200. "Coming up to the anniversary of a pension scheme, people would have got new salaries and you had to work out all of their benefits based on the new salaries. All of this was manual at this stage.

You had your calculator and you were just bashing away, making out record cards for each person and then moving on to the next one and putting it all on a huge hand-written schedule." Mr Feely witnessed a change to computerised systems over the next six or seven years while he was taking his actuarial exams.

"It was hard going, a long and tough qualifying process that took me eight years. I had to go home after work and study in the evenings and that went on for 40 weeks a year." The newly-qualified actuary left IPT after 10 years, when he was head-hunted to work as a portfolio manager for AIB Investment Managers. He stayed there for three-and-a-half years.

He had been doing a lot of performance-measurement work in IPT so he knew most of the managers around and had helped with the investment selection process. Working in AIB was a dynamic shift for Mr Feely and he relished the direct contact with clients.

He found it quite different after being very comfortable with his pensions expertise as an actuary to working in an area where everybody was an investment expert.

In his time at AIB, Mr Feely moved to London to take over AIB's UK investment management company. That was his first management position.

"I learned a lot in that but I also learned that I was a real home-bird. After 15 months I came shooting back to Dublin with my wife and baby daughter." He then returned to IPT and headed the sales division for two years which was another departure for him as he had to go out and look for new clients for the first time. Then, almost four years ago, Mr Feely joined Scottish Provident Ireland as head of development.

In his current position as acting chief executive, Mr Feely is responsible for the operational management and the development of Scottish Provident's Irish business. He is enthusiastic about all the current activity in the pensions area. The next big event is the Pensions Bill and although the IAPF was happy with the consultation process, it will have plenty to say when the Bill is published shortly.

The Pensions Ombudsman is sorely needed, in his view, as there is no effective way of resolving disputes presently. On the issue of the Personal Retirement Savings Account (PRSA) being undermined by the new Government savings scheme, Mr Feely believes the question is what will happen in five years when people access their lump sum. "You have to remember that the PRSA framework was put together against an environment where there was no other savings scheme."

Mr Feely's primary concern is to promote long-term savings so that people will have security in retirement.

He agrees that the Government savings scheme will displace savings that would have gone into the new pensions vehicle. However, he believes the damage would be mitigated if there was a mechanism or encouragement for converting those short-term savings into longer-term savings.

"I think the PRSA will take off anyway and will be reasonably successful but I suspect that it may not generate the amount of widespread coverage that was intended because of the fact that there is this other vehicle available for people to save."

Outside work, Mr Feely's life revolves around his family. He has three young children and tries to spend as much time with them as he can. Mr Feely still thinks Dublin is a great place to bring up children and has no complaints about childcare.

His wife Lisa is a pensions manager at Friends First and they have had the same "wonderful" childminder for the past four years.