Ben has more than 20 years’ experience of managing and consulting on UK and international pension arrangements. He joined the Vestey Group in 2001 and led their highly successful long-term strategy to transfer more than £500m of pension liabilities to the regulated insurance market with a series of bulk annuity transactions.

In 2015, with the support of the Vestey family, Ben established Western Pension Solutions with the purpose of helping other family businesses de-risk their legacy pension arrangements and provide highly effective pension arrangements for current and future generations of employees.

Ben continues to hold senior management positions for Vestey Holdings, including strategic HR and reward roles for the Group’s international food businesses. He is also the Non-Executive Chairman of K3 Advisory, a specialist bulk annuity broking business and a Fellow of the Pensions Management Institute.

An active member of the family business community, Ben is the co-founder of the Heritage Library, a collection of books that celebrate the history and heritage of family-owned firms in the UK and overseas.

Esmé is a qualified actuary with seven years’ experience.  She joined Western Pension Solutions in December 2021 from British Airways where she acted as an internal consultant on BA’s two defined benefit pension schemes for three years, balancing the competing objectives of trustees, the sponsor, members and advisers.

Prior to BA, Esmé spent four years at EY in their corporate consultancy team providing pensions advice to pension scheme sponsors of differing sectors and sizes.

Esmé specialises in pensions accounting disclosures, communications, modelling and project management.

Esmé is based in Shrewsbury.

Julian is an enterprise risk actuary who helps private companies set and meet strategic objectives. He has advised family businesses as well as UK and overseas trustee and corporate entities for over twenty years. He advises on all aspects of pensions strategy.

Julian joined Western Pension Solutions in 2016 from Lane Clark and Peacock; prior to that he was at HSBC for eight years. The first part of Julian’s career was spent advising pension scheme trustees. He uses this experience to help guide business owners in negotiations with trustees and scheme actuaries. He is known for his agile thinking and for seeking non-standard solutions.

He is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries.

Julian is based in London.  His clients are spread throughout the UK and the Channel Islands.

Ruth joined Western Pension Solutions in October 2018. She previously worked at PwC for 7 years, where she became a Manager, advising a diverse client base across both privately and publicly owned organisations operating in a variety of sectors.

In 2019 Ruth qualified with the Pension Management Institute’s Award in Pension Trusteeship. Ruth now uses her project management and advisory experience to support the provision of pensions advice to family businesses.

Spencer is a qualified actuary with more than 25 years of experience in a wide range of sectors, providing pensions advice to scheme sponsors and trustees.

Spencer is a specialist at using various valuation systems and designing bespoke models, which are skills he utilises in helping sponsoring employers understand and manage their pension commitments and accounting disclosures.

He joined Western Pension Solutions in November 2021, having previously worked as Director and Chief Actuary at PensionsWatch and for 20 years at PwC. During his time at PwC, Spencer was a regional expert in accounting for pensions and he filled a national technical role.

Ben is a qualified actuary with eight years of experience, providing pensions advice to both trustees and sponsors of differing sectors and sizes.

He joined Western Pension Solutions in August 2019, having previously worked at EY and more recently PwC. During this time, Ben helped to support both trustees and sponsoring employers manage their pension commitments covering liabilities from £2m to over £1b. This support included the implementation of liability management exercises and scheme design changes, funding strategy and valuation assistance, transaction of insurance solutions and the design and application of journey plans to help set and meet targets.

Through the skills Ben has developed, together with his wide-ranging experience, he is in a strong position to provide actuarial advice and support family owned businesses in designing and implementing strategies for their pension arrangements that reflect their values and targets.