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.

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.

Jon has 15 years’ experience of advising family businesses on all aspects of pensions strategy. He joined Western Pension Solutions in 2017, having worked at PwC and KPMG, where latterly he was a Pensions Director focused on advising privately owned organisations.

He has helped family businesses design and implement pension strategies that align with their values and corporate strategy. This has included leading projects on all the key areas of focus including investment strategy, benefit design, scheme funding, accounting, liability management and insurance solutions.

Jon’s expertise has enabled him to put in place a number of complex restructures and to find a way forward in circumstances where the pension scheme has become too large for the company. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries and a member of the Institute of Family Business working party on pensions.

Ruth joined Western Pension Solutions in October 2018. She previously worked at PwC for 7 years, where she qualified as a Chartered Accountant and 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.

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.

Edmund belongs to the fifth generation of the Vestey family and, having graduated from university with a degree in Sound Technology, has since spent time in other subsidiaries of Vestey Holdings, developing a deeper understanding of the operations and dynamics of a multi-generational family businesses. Edmund joined WPS in September 2019 as an actuarial analyst and is gaining valuable experience in the practice of family business consultancy, whilst also finding time to progress through the actuarial exams.