XPS Group has appointed five new partners and promoted 135 colleagues.

The promotions have been made across all 15 XPS locations in the UK. The new partners are Dave Boulton, Louisa Lawton, Alex Quant, Karen Sloan, and Brian Woolnough. Woolnough heads the pensions administration operations business in the London and Chelmsford offices, and Sloan heads the actuarial team in Belfast and leads XPS’s specialist GMP equalisation calculations team. Quant heads the environmental, social and governance esearch team within the Investment business. Additionally, Lawton is the operations manager responsible for DB pensions administration across the Bristol, Reading and Birmingham offices. Boulton heads the cyber security function, helping protect XPS, its pension scheme members, people, technology and data.

Van Lanschot Kempen Investment Management has announced the appointment of Nick Flanagan as head of consultant relations.

In his role, Flanagan will be responsible for managing the relationships Van Lanschot Kempen holds with a number of its consultants that provide research, oversight, and a selection of fiduciary management and outsourced chief investment officer (OCIO) services to the firm’s UK institutional investors. He has more than a decade of experience and has previously held roles at Northern Trust Asset Management, DWS, Insight Investment, and Legal & General Investment Management. He will report to head of UK institutional relations, Vicky Casebourne. Flanagan's appointment also builds on the recent appointment of Partick Race as managing director.

Canada Life has appointed Shreyas Sridhar as managing director of bulk purchase annuities (BPA).

The appointment is effective from 7 April 2025 subject to regulatory approval. Sridhar will also join the Canada Life UK executive committee, reporting to UK chief executive, Lindsey Rix-Broom. Sridhar joined Canada Life UK in February 2024 as business development director for its BPA business. Prior to joining Canada Life, he spent eight years in roles within Legal & General’s pension risk transfer business, most recently as head of reinsurance & international development. He succeeds Tim Coulson, who will continue to work with Canada Life in an advisory capacity before retiring at the end of 2025.

---