News story

New independent member appointed to the Judicial Pension Board

The Lord Chancellor has announced the appointment of Russell Agius for a tenure of 2 years.

Russell Agius has been appointed to the Judicial Pension Board (JPB) from 10 October 2017 to 9 October 2019.

Mr Russell Agius has been an actuary and partner at Aon, a company providing retirement and investment services, since 2007. Previously, he worked for several other actuarial consultancies. Between 1998 to 2007, he was an actuary and partner at Higham Dunnett Shaw and prior to that worked at Arthur Andersen (1996 to 1998) and Mercer (1994 to 1996). He is a Scheme Actuary to 8 pension schemes and acts as strategic actuary to another 3.

JPB was set up to act as the scheme management board and the Judicial Pension Scheme Advisory Board was also created to look at scheme policy and make recommendations as to the suitability of any potential changes to the Scheme.

Due to the specialised nature of the role, it was decided not undertake an open competition as this would have only attracted a very narrow pool of potential candidates. Thus, in line with paragraph 3.3 of the Governance Code on Public Appointments, the Lord Chancellor sought the Commissioner for Public Appointment’s approval to exempt from the Code of Practice the appointment of Russell Agius.

This appointment has, therefore, been made without running a recruitment competition which is in line with the Commissioner’s Code of Practice for Ministerial Appointments to Public Bodies.

Russell has not declared any political activity.

Published 15 March 2018