Professional trustees are bringing increased diversity to pension trustee boards because younger people are opting for careers in the role, according to Vidett client director, Clare Routledge.

Speaking during a panel session on defined benefit (DB) trusteeship at the Pensions UK Investment Conference 2026 in Edinburgh, Tuesday 10 March, she argued that the professional model is bringing in people at a younger age, therefore bringing increased diversity.

“I’m seeing people that are becoming professional trustees as a career choice, not necessarily getting to the end of one career and then saying, ‘I’ll become a trustee’,” she explained.

“We’re seeing graduate schemes bringing people in and training them up into these roles. The professional trustee market is becoming a bit more representative of the UK market as a whole. Trustees are getting younger, there are more women, there are more people from different ethnic backgrounds, and I think all of that is good to bring all of those diverse perspectives.”

On diversity in sole trusteeship, Routledge noted that with Vidett’s sole trusteeship appointments, they have at least two accredited trustees operating on each board and bring a mix of people when certain specialisms are required.

Responding, Aviva Staff Pension Scheme trustee, Gawaine Batchelor, said he was “heartened” to hear of the increased diversity among professional trustees.

This, he said, is because member-nominated trustees generally have to be further on in their career “to have the basis to be appointed and to feel comfortable operating in a board environment and that you will bring something".

He added: “The other difficulty is time. I have a full-time job, and the trustee workload is very large. While my employer is accommodating, I wouldn’t say it was fully accommodating. I have to do an awful lot of work outside of normal hours. If I had younger children, that would be really quite hard to do and fit in.

“It feels to me the member-nominated/company-nominated, you’re playing against diversity.”

Despite this, Batchelor stressed the importance of diversity on a trustee board, stating that you need “diverse perspectives”.

“You need diversity of thought, you need diversity of background, experience. If you have that, you will have a much richer conversation and a better decision.”

Lay trustees, he added, “bring a fresh perspective” and can “challenge advisers much more freely”.

However, Routledge, as a professional trustee that works on multiple schemes, said she is able to see “different perspectives from different advisers”.

“I will go to a funding valuation with different scheme actuaries and get to build up a range of approaches from things I see,” she stated.

She agreed that member-nominated trustees are “very valuable” and company-nominated trustees can bring insights that she would not get from the business directly.

The panel discussion centred on the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) consultation on trusteeship, which closed to submissions earlier this month.

Many responses raised concerns about the independence of trustees and potential conflicts of interest as the market evolves and consolidates.

Fellow panellist, DWP ESG, productive finance and VFM policy manager, Des Healy, said his department had received 130 responses to the consultation. Key themes raised included governance structures, ensuring appropriate member voice and how to improve trusteeship generally.

Healy added that creating a balance on trustee boards, especially larger ones, is “going to be challenging”.

He continued: “In any setting at scale with a diverse bunch of employers, diverse employees, that is going to be very challenging. We can look to how this has been done overseas. It has been done in Australia, Canada and the Netherlands.

“They have got some good governance structures where you do get that member voice, and you do get that right balance. What you want on a trustee board is not everyone to be a professional trustee.

“There is space for that lay trustee or that member’s viewpoint that can ask the difficult questions that sometimes professionals either don’t want to hear or don’t quite understand.”

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