An Audience With
My Career with Chris Hitchen
Published: September 3, 2025
Interviewee:
|
Chris Hitchen |
Chris Hitchen’s approach to leadership has seen him work with everyone from union firebrands to finance directors. As he steps down from Border to Coast, he reflects on how listening and collaboration built a soon-to-be £110 billion success story.
Beginning his working life in a “quite hairy bar” in Rochdale, Chris Hitchen learnt a key lesson – one which would go on to define his decades-long career: listen to everyone, treat people as you find them, and make sure you fully understand the situation – and then, act decisively.
A champion of collaboration, Chris has been a key player at the heart of some of the industry’s biggest changes and most radical innovations – from the creation of NEST to the rise of pooling, he has seen it all, with one key thread tethering everything together.
“The most basic thing is the sense of purpose,” he explained. “Most of the places I’ve worked, it’s been about trying to make things better over the long term for large groups of people who probably can’t do it for themselves [because they are too busy working, raising families, living their lives].”
Moving into the pension’s world
A self-described “jack of all trades”, after Chris headed to university to study maths before training to be an actuary. It was here he made a decision that would change his life.
He explained: “At the time, the two main jobs in the actuarial world were working in pensions or working in life insurance so I applied to both, and got the pick of a few different jobs on both sides.”
Starting off life as a pensions actuary, it was here where he entered a space that was both intellectually satisfying and one where he felt he was able to help people.
He added: “That’s been my motivation throughout my career, and you get that really quickly when you go in – even as a junior actuarial student where you’re trying to get someone’s pension right and ensure they get paid properly. So it’s really worthwhile and grounding in a way you don’t expect.”
Chris then spent a few years as an investment consultant providing advice to different pension schemes and other institutions.
Then in 1998 an opportunity came up that he, as a “bit of a train nut”, simply couldn’t pass up – taking on the role of CIO at Railpen. He’d later take on the role of chief executive at the organisation.
His time at Railpen
He came into Railpen at an interesting time for the organisation as the railways had not long been privatised – leading to the British Rail Pension Scheme becoming 100 different private schemes.
However, thanks to the work of his predecessors these were treated as sections within one big scheme with one central trustee. “It was like an LGPS pool before LGPS pools were a thing,” Chris remarked.
“We invested the money in pools, but the strategy was set individually for different employers – so my first innovation was to bring in a fiduciary service where we provided investment advice to all these different sections of the scheme. And this was really my way of keeping it feeling like one scheme.”
Another core part of his work was liaising with the Railpen Trustee Board, which consisted of not just finance directors at railway companies, but also union general secretaries and other pensioner representatives.
“They are very different personalities, but they’re all really good at what they do and I’m still in touch with many of them,” he reflected.
“I’ve had the pleasure of working with several general secretaries over the years, including [former RMT general secretary] Bob Crow who was a trustee of ours for a while.
“These people are smart, and they know what’s important. They don’t necessarily express themselves in the way a finance director would, but they’re really good at what they do.
“I must admit, it wasn’t a sad day for me when Bob Crow decided that he had more important problems than the pension scheme and delegated this job to his deputy, but nevertheless they all did a really good job, and it taught me a lot about how to work with people.”
Representing the industry during times of crisis
During his time at Railpen, Chris also took on leadership roles at what is now Pensions UK. During this time, he wore several hats, including as chair of the Investment Council, the Pensions Quality Mark and – between 2007 and 2009 – chair of Pensions UK.
Taking on the mantle as the association’s youngest ever chair, his time was mostly dominated by the global financial crisis – with his primary job being to “make sure we didn’t get blamed for everything”.
This was particularly important as, despite pensions funds being at the forefront of good corporate governance, the government were casting around for scapegoats for the collapse of the banking sector.
He added: “Shareholders were being accused of being asleep at the wheel while the banks were taking all these risks, and there was an attempt to pin that on trustees because they’re ultimately the beneficial owners of the assets.
“So, it was very important to make the case that that wasn’t a fair representation of what was going on.”
A year after stepping down from his chairmanship at the trade body, he became an inaugural board member at National Employment Savings Trust (NEST), where he chaired the Investment Committee for eight years across two stints.
Set up off the back of the Turner Commission, this government-backed workplace pension scheme was designed to help employers meet their auto-enrolment obligations and was primarily intended for small and medium-sized businesses that didn’t have an existing pension scheme – though in practice it’s also used by many large employers too.
Reflecting on his work there, and tying back to his career-long determination to make things better for people, Chris said: “13 million people have a pension that wouldn’t have had one otherwise, and that’s such a privilege to have been involved in.
“They’re not very big pensions yet. If you do the maths then NEST’s £50 billion averages out at £3,000 to £4,000 for each member, but they will keep growing.”
He added, “The biggest issue in DC pensions, unlike the LGPS, is how to provide confidence to people in retirement that they won’t run out of money as they spend their pots.
“At NEST we did a lot of work on how to help people regulate their drawdown, and there is ongoing thinking about how best to provide risk-sharing at end of life, perhaps through insurance or by some form of CDC [Collective Defined Contribution].”
Moving into the LGPS world
While Chris was helping to expand the pensions franchise, the LGPS world was preparing for a radical shift as to how its sector works – with this coming in the rise of pooling.
He said: “I was aware that pooling was becoming a thing in the LGPS as I’d already been asked for advice about how we ran the Railpen pool. It felt like something I could contribute to.”
And then, in 2017 and thanks to a “happy accident of timing”, he took on the role as the inaugural chairman of Border to Coast.
The new pool was fortunate that three of its partner funds had in-house investment management teams – namely South Yorkshire, East Riding and Teesside – with the pool able to take people from these teams, forming the nucleus of the initial team at Border to Coast.
Chris explained: “I think these authorities will all say they were doing a great job, but they weren’t sure how long they’d be able to keep it going because replacing the team themselves would have been quite difficult to do, so we’ve provided that resilience. And I think that’s one of the key benefits of pooling – being a resilient, we-resourced organisation.”
Since then, the pool has grown to having more than £65 billion in assets with a staff of 170+ people. And this is only going to expand after it was announced seven funds from ACCESS plan to join Border to Coast, bringing their total assets under management to £110 billion.
One of the keys to its success so far, in the view of Chris, is that all its partner funds are “minded to work together”.
He added: “There’s lots of different people with lots of different opinions, but they all recognise they’re stronger together. So from the start they’ve been willing to find solutions.”
Alongside this, the pool has given partner funds a certain amount of choice, one which allows them to bring most of their assets into the pool.
“It wouldn’t have worked at all if we’d said on day one ‘we’re in charge now, we’re doing it this way’. I don’t think the LGPS will necessarily ever be ready for that, and it certainly wasn’t ready for it at the time.
“And we had lots of strong officers and committees who knew what they were doing, and they did have to compromise to fit in with pooling, but it was important we didn’t push them too far towards a one-size-fits-all solution so it’s about finding that middle way.”
As for building up Border to Coast, one simple but key decision was deciding to base itself in Leeds. He explained: “It’s a big, happening city, and if you need to employ graduates there’s a much bigger supply there – so I think that was a good decision, and part of ensuring executive resilience.”
The future of pooling
Of course, Border to Coast will be playing an increasingly elevated role in the LGPS world going forward – with it being one of the six pools taking responsibility for managing the assets of its partner funds. Each is also being the central hub for advice for these funds.
When it comes to how to manage this transition, Chris said the pool is very conscious of the fact you have to listen to your partner funds in doing that implementation.
He added: “That would be my advice as well, you can’t suddenly go for a one-size-fits-all solution because you have to retain your licence to operate, you’ve got to be cognisant and respectful of where your clients have come from and their own particular circumstances.
“They do have different members and stakeholders, so there’ll be a lot of work to do over the next year or two to work through those nuances of exactly where the dividing lines are.”
Additionally, we will be seeing two of the pools – Brunel and ACCESS – disappear, meaning that 21 funds will be in need of a new home. This has led to lots of officers now playing a “multi-dimensional dating game” when it comes to deciding where to go.
From a pool perspective, Chris was very clear – partner funds will be key to deciding who, if any, funds will join Border to Coast. He explained: “The board I chair will make recommendation to the partner funds – but they will all individually need to agree to it.
“So, in theory, it’s not possible for us to take on anyone the partner funds don’t want, but our partner funds are, I would say, open to new partners in general.”
The funds are, however, very conscious that they don’t want to “break the culture that’s been created”, with Chris adding that similar conversations are likely to be happening at the other pools as well.
Why now
With the industry on the cusp of change, you’d forgive Chris for wanting to stay on as chair of the organisation – but for him, his departure was a long time in the planning.
“I helped write a succession plan about five years ago,” he explained.
“I was being a bit too clever by half, thinking ‘well, we have four independent NEDs, wouldn’t it be great if we all left one at a time, year by year’ – that way you maintain board cohesion so there’s not too much disruption, so map it all out that way and think about different parameters.
“It’s a good idea if I don’t leave at a similar time to the senior independent director or chief executive – so all those things led to a sequence of term ends. It seemed quite an easy thing to do five years ago, but now it’s got to my turn I’m thinking ‘why did I do that?’”, he smiled.
“But you have to stick to the plan, because clearly the development of the pool is much bigger than any individual.”
As for what’s next, Chris has said he’d love to stay in the LGPS in some capacity – however what that will look like is yet to be seen.
Meanwhile, Chris remains chair of the Nuclear Liabilities Fund, funding the decommissioning of nuclear power stations for the benefit of future generations, another long-term project that exemplifies his commitment to intergenerational responsibility.
One thing that is certain, wherever he pops up next, he’ll continue to be a passionate advocate for long-term saving and continue to remain steadfast to his principles of collaboration and taking people as you find them.
Further reading
For more information about Border to Coast Pensions Partnership, visit their website
Border to Coast profile page
More Related Content...
|
|
|