Team

Simon True

Chief Executive

Simon is a highly respected life insurance executive, with over thirty years of experience in the industry. His most recent executive role was the Group Corporate Development Director and Group Chief Actuary at the FTSE100 insurer Phoenix Group. He previously led the M&A teams within Resolution plc, and Resolution Operations both of which grew into FTSE100 businesses.

He joined Clara as Chief Executive in March 2022.

Richard Zugic

Chief Financial Officer

Richard is joining Clara with 25 years’ experience in the pensions and life insurance industries. He is a Trustee of the Abbey Life defined benefit Pension Scheme, and joins Clara from Phoenix Group where he was the interim Chief Financial Officer of Phoenix Re, and previously the Group Chief Actuary. A qualified Actuary, Richard has a strong track record of delivery including the creation of Phoenix’s Bulk Purchase Annuity proposition.

Rebecca Wainwright

Chief Operating Officer

Rebecca joins Clara with 20 years’ experience in the insurance sector and boasts a strong track record across strategy development and implementation, operational delivery, and governance. Her previous role was as Director of Heritage Strategy, Planning, and Project Delivery at Phoenix Group. Prior to that, Rebecca served as Chief Operating Officer at ReAssure before its acquisition by Phoenix. She has also served as an ambassador for Everywoman and joins Clara with significant Executive Committee and Board experience.

Ashu Bhargava

Chief Origination Officer

Ashu has worked with many boards of trustees and sponsors of pensions schemes on optimising their journey plans to self-sufficiency or buyout. Ashu joined Clara as he believes Clara takes innovative journey plan optimisation to another level and can provide even greater security for members and even greater certainty for sponsors, all at a lower cost.

Ashu has 25 years’ experience in the pensions market, including at WTW, where he worked as both a Scheme and Corporate Actuary. While at WTW, a project led by Ashu won the Professional Pensions Pension Scheme Trustees of the Year Award and Pension Age Best Risk Management Exercise Award. While at L&G, a project led by Ashu won the Pension Age Best Risk Management Exercise Award.

Luke Stratford-Higton

Chief Pricing Officer

Luke has significant experience of pension risk transfer pricing. He joined Clara as he believes that consolidation offers an opportunity to think differently about pensions risk and pricing.

Luke is a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries who started his career at PwC. He has worked in a number of roles in the life and pensions sector focusing on how best to quantify the uncertainties and risks involved in making long-term promises. This has given him broad experience of the sector from the perspectives of advisor, insurer, reinsurer and, now at Clara, a pension scheme.

Dan Adams

Chief Commercial Officer

Dan joined Clara in June 2022 having been an investor director of Clara since 2018. He made the step across as he was attracted by the opportunity of leading on our transactions to see them through to completion.

Dan has responsibility for bringing together the work done across Clara to price, diligence and document potential transactions and set their commercial terms. He is then at the heart of working with trustees, sponsors and our investors to guide them through to completion. Prior to joining Clara he worked at Sixth Street, including taking on a number of portfolio directorships on Sixth Street’s behalf, and prior to that at Morgan Stanley.

Ross Wood

Chief Risk Officer

Ross was attracted to Clara by its strong purpose and the team’s shared mission of improving outcomes for members in a safe and secure way. He’s motivated by the challenge of building something entirely new and dynamic in the pensions space that builds on best risk management practices from across the financial services industry.

Ross has responsibility for oversight and challenge of Clara’s risk management and compliance activities and assists the Trustee with its risk and compliance responsibilities. He has over 18 years of actuarial, investment and wider experience from a range of in-house and consulting roles. Prior to joining Clara he worked at a major bank and continues as a member-nominated trustee of their pension scheme.

Hattie Clover

General Counsel

Hattie is a qualified pensions lawyer who brings a wealth of experience of pensions and de-risking issues to the Clara team. She qualified at a major law firm before moving to the pensions team of a ‘magic circle’ law firm, and then moving inhouse with an insurer.

Reflecting an earlier role with an Ombudsman, Hattie is committed to helping ensure good outcomes for members. The role Clara plays in delivering safer pensions and the range of issues that the legal team deals with is what attracted her to Clara.

Uravi Patel

Senior Legal Counsel

Uravi is a commercial lawyer and joined Clara in January 2024. She qualified at a niche insurance law firm in the City and has since moved inhouse. Uravi brings a range of legal experience from the financial services industry and most recently was part of the inhouse legal team of a FTSE 250 insurer.

The opportunity to support on an entirely new model of consolidation in the pensions space and a focus on securing good outcomes for members is what attracted Uravi to Clara. She enjoys being part of a close-knit team and the ability to get involved in multiple areas of the business.

Jayne Pocock

Head of Trustee Services

Jayne joined Clara in March 2023. She has over 35 years experience in the pension industry, specialising in governance and administration. Jayne passionately believes in prioritising the member experience and supports the Clara Trustee Board and the wider Clara team to deliver better outcomes for members.

Jayne is a Fellow of the Pensions Management Institute and has supported many trustee boards during her career, including several pension schemes sponsored by FTSE 100 and 250 companies. She understands what is required to have a well-run pension scheme. Past roles have included working for employee benefit consultancies, an independent trustee firm and more recently the in-house pensions governance manager at Legal & General.

Louise Ellisdon

Pensions Administration Client Relationship Manager

Louise joined Clara in February 2024 after spending 10 years with a BPA insurer. Her role at Clara is to support the Clara Trustee Board and administration partners to secure the best outcomes for members.

She has experience across the pension industry, including administration team management; project & data cleanse management, relationship management; working with trustees, advisors, and sponsors across a range of schemes. Louise is a chartered manager and is also qualified with the Association of Project Management (AMP PMQ). She joined Clara because of its member first purpose, feeling passionately that improving member security and providing great experiences for them is essential.

Nina Bingham

Executive Assistant

Nina is a true people person and her passion lies in organisation, excellent governance and rigorous attention to detail. She’s a firm believer in every company having a strong social importance to the work it does, which is why building a member-first business that aims to secure its members pensions was so attractive as an idea.

At Clara Nina is responsible for the coordination and management of the senior team. For nearly 20 years Nina has managed offices and looked after the professional lives of the people that run them. Having run her own business in the hospitality industry, she knows exactly what it takes to transform an initial idea into a fully operational, successful company.

Ria Byne

Junior Executive Assistant

Ria is an experienced administrator with a focus on customer service. Having worked in roles where she can see the immediate benefit to customers of her contribution, she’s excited to be part of Clara where she can be part of much wider benefit to members.

At Clara Ria works with Nina in ensuring the whole team are coordinated and supported. With a warm and positive attitude, she’s proud of her part in helping Clara’s continued success.

Damien Pantling

Head of Financial Reporting

Damien joined Clara in early 2024, having spent the past 3 years heading up one of the largest LGPS defined benefit funds, and leading the Fund through a journey of significant transformation and improvement. He is a Chartered Public Finance Accountant and joins Clara with over 10 years’ professional finance experience across a variety of sectors, and with a passion for defined benefit consolidation, improving outcomes for members and adding deep commercial value. Damien is also passionate about delivering high-quality financial reports for Clara to ensure its continued success and growth.

Tineke Zonneveld

Financial Controller

Tineke is excited to have joined Clara to ensure we pay the right people at the right time, whether that be our staff, our suppliers or our members. Managing and understanding the finances is at the heart of any successful business. She’s also looking forward to helping develop our accounting processes and using Clara’s investment in technology to deliver financial information which supports fully informed decision making.

Tineke is a qualified ACCA accountant with twenty years experience in a range of financial services roles. She’s worked in management accounting roles in specialist investment management, brokering and for an investment exchange.

Ravi Dua

Head of Data and Analytics

Ravi has a successful track record of delivering business value via cutting-edge technology solutions. Before joining Clara, he provided consultancy services to many renowned European clients. He strongly believes in improving pension members' experience by treating data as an enterprise asset.

His areas of expertise include master data management, management information systems, data governance, data integration and quality, metadata management, AI/ML, and data security. In the past, he designed data governance frameworks for trade reporting, customer risk assessment, CRM automation, and many other critical business processes.

Ravi joined Clara to utilise his skills to deliver better outcomes for all stakeholders through the use of data.

Sam Tomes

Senior Pricing Actuary

Sam is an experienced actuary with a background in consultancy and risk-transfer pricing. He developed his career at a major pension consultancy, qualifying as a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and a Chartered Enterprise Risk Actuary, before working as part of the pricing team at a bulk annuity provider.

Having seen the challenges of decision making from the trustee, sponsor and insurer perspective, he was excited to join Clara having previously spent time working at another consolidator. Sam plays a key role in helping the team understand and manage the risks and uncertainties involved in opportunities, and making sure we provide clear information to help trustees and sponsors decide whether Clara is right for them and their members.

Lewis Edmonds

Senior Pricing Actuary

Lewis built his actuarial career at a specialist insurer, starting as an actuarial analyst before qualifying as a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. He has worked on a range of risk-transfer pricing and risk management issues in his previous roles, and brings knowledge of how Bulk Purchase Annuity insurers operate to Clara. Lewis also volunteers as a Career Ambassador for the actuarial profession.

Lewis has seen how members’ security can be improved in the pension risk transfer market, and the importance of achieving this. He joined Clara to be part of our close-knit team, focussed on securing better pensions for members.

Will Scott

Senior Pricing Analyst

Will started his career as a pensions actuary after reading theoretical physics and mathematics at university. From this, he learned to seek understanding of the logic underlying complex issues and how the application of technology enables us to solve them.

He has already gained a breadth of experience on high profile cases within the pensions industry, with him focusing on actuarial modelling. He is student member of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.

Pensions are crucially important to so many people. Will therefore takes pride in helping to secure member’s benefits.

James O’Hare

Senior Pricing Manager

James has a background in maths and actuarial science with post-graduate qualifications in both actuarial science and computer science. This has given him a strong appreciation of how technology and systems can underpin high quality analysis and modelling.

He has worked in a number of roles in the pensions and insurance industry, in the UK, Ireland and internationally. He has experience of DB pensions consultancy, and significant experience in bulk annuity pricing. His recent work has focused on building the engines and portals to support this.

James is passionate about how technology can transform actuarial science from being a mechanism for calculation and pricing into a sophisticated and powerful risk management and analysis tool that improves security for members.

Jill Copes

Pricing Analyst

Jill began her career in a major pensions consultancy after studying Actuarial Science and Risk Management at Queen’s University Belfast.

In this role, she was able to advise both trustee and corporate clients across UK and Irish schemes. She was involved in assessing the funding levels of pension schemes and testing the valuation software used to support this. She was also active in working with new potential clients and on multiple exercises to give greater security or choice to scheme members

The innovative solution that Clara has brought to the DB pensions market alongside our key priority of having a positive effect on members is exactly what attracted Jill to the role.

She is a student member of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.