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Roger Sanders OBE, Cert PFS

Member and Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee

Roger Sanders photo

Date of Appointment: July 2018 – May 2021
Reappointment for a second term, Dec 2020: May 2021 - May 2024

Roger was the director of workplace distribution and industry affairs at Lighthouse Group Plc until 2020 and its acquisition by Quilter Plc in June 2019, having previously been Managing Director of its employee benefits division, and a director of Lighthouse Benefits Ltd, the sponsor of its master trust, the Corporate Pensions Trust, of which he was a trustee.

Prior to joining Lighthouse in 2010, he was deputy chair and director of employee benefits at Helm Godfrey Ltd from 2005, which followed 22 years managing his employee benefits consultancy in the West End. From 2000-2003, he was also the executive director in London of Rasmala Investments Ltd, the first UK regulated business to develop and market sharia compliant products; he served on the Bank of England’s working party on Islamic finance, achieving a change in the taxation of sharia mortgages in the 2004 Finance Act.

Before starting his own practice in 1983, Roger worked for the Sun Alliance and London Insurance Group, which included a tour with Jardine Mathieson in Hong Kong. His “composite” career has given him a unique exposure to the world of general insurance, as well as to financial services, investments and occupational pensions.

Roger was a member of the Financial Capability Board of the Money and Pensions Service for 5 years until 2020. He served as President of the Insurance Institute of London in 2017-18, and is a trustee of the new Museum charity from 2021. 

He has held a variety of industry and non-executive positions, including serving as a non-exec director of the Financial Ombudsman Service 2005-2013; as chair of the Financial Services Authority’s smaller businesses panel 1999-2004, and as a non-executive director of the Personal Investment Authority 1996-2000. He was a founding member and a director and deputy chair of the Association of Independent Financial Advisers 1999-2005. In Europe, he chaired the life and pensions committee of the European Federation of Insurance and Investment Intermediaries in Brussels 2004-2006 and served 2004-2010 as the UK’s retail market representative on the practitioner working group of the Committee of European Securities Regulators in Paris.

Roger, awarded an OBE in 2002 for services to financial services regulation, is the son of a dairy farmer from North Devon and lives in Westminster. He is a Freeman of the City of London and was the Master of the Worshipful Company of Broderers for 2017-18. He is also Chairman of the Trustees of the English National Opera Benevolent Fund; was previously Chair of the Council of Roedean School until 2020; and is the Chief Honorary Steward of Westminster Abbey.