BTPS

About us

Scheme history

  • 1969

  • 1979

  • 1983

  • 1984

  • 2001

  • 2006

  • 2018

  • The Scheme’s origins date back to 1969 when it was part of the Post Office Staff Superannuation Scheme, (as telecom services had historically been supplied by the Post Office.)

  • The telecoms business separated from the rest of the Post Office and British Telecom Corporation

  • The British Telecommunications Staff Superannuation Scheme was set up (renamed the BT Pension Scheme in 1993)

  • BT was privatised and the Government granted BTPS a Crown Guarantee.

  • The Scheme was closed to new members

  • BTPS was a founding signatory of the Principles of Responsible Investment (PRI)

  • The Scheme closed to future accrual

Trustees and Trustee duties

The Scheme’s Trustee is BT Pension Scheme Trustees Limited, a corporate Trustee with ultimate fiduciary responsibility for the Scheme and its members. The Trustee’s key responsibility is to ensure that BTPS pays benefits as they fall due. In addition to the Chairman, there are four employer nominated Trustee Directors and four member nominated Trustee Directors on the board.

The Chairman is appointed by BT with the agreement of the recognised BT Trade Unions.

Jill Mackenzie Chair

Jill is an experienced executive and non-executive director with an extensive background in pensions…

Jill is an experienced executive and non-executive director with an extensive background in pensions. She spent 20 years working in leadership roles with a pensions remit across a range of large, consumer facing organisations, her corporate last role being Executive Director at Virgin Media. Jill made the move to trusteeship in 2013 and has spent the last ten years as an independent trustee, chairing defined benefit pension trustee boards and earning her accreditation as professionally qualified pensions trustee. She served as a board member and senior independent director with NEST (National Employment Savings Trust) for seven years between 2015 and 2022 and she currently sits on the board of the Fidelity Master Trust.

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Chris Cheetham

Chris has over 40 years’ experience in the investment management industry…

Chris has over 40 years’ experience in the investment management industry, almost all of which has been in senior investment roles. Formerly Chair of the Mineworkers Pension Scheme, which has c.£12bn of assets and 135,000 members, Chris was Chair of HSBC Asset Management (UK) until June 2020. He is a Non-Executive Director of the Pension Protection Fund, a Director of People’s Investment Limited and a Trustee of the Science Museum Foundation. Chris began his career with Prudential Portfolio Managers (now M&G) where he worked in a variety of investment management roles, ultimately as Director of Investment Strategy and Research. During his career he held positions as Global CIO of AXA Investment Managers and CEO of AXA Sun Life Asset Management. In May 2003 he joined HSBC’s asset management business as Global Chief Investment Officer.

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Andrew Clare

Andrew is the Professor of Asset Management at Bayes Business School.

Andrew is the Professor of Asset Management at Bayes Business School. Before joining Bayes, he was a Senior Research Manager in the Monetary Analysis wing of the Bank of England, which supported the work of the Monetary Policy Committee. Andrew also worked as the Financial Economist for Legal and General Investment Management (LGIM), where he was responsible for the group’s investment process and where he began the development of LGIM’s initial Liability Driven Investment offering. Andrew is co-author of The Trustee Guide to Investment and has published extensively in both academic and practitioner journals on a wide range of economic and financial market issues. In a survey published in 2007, Andrew was ranked as the world’s ninth most prolific finance author of the past fifty years. Andrew has served on a range of pension trustee and investment committee boards, including the GEC Marconi, Magnox and Amey pension boards and on the Investment Oversight Committees of Standard Life and Quilter plc.

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Emily Clark

Emily is currently Chief Financial Officer of BT’s Networks organisation.;

Emily is currently Chief Financial Officer of BT’s Networks organisation. Prior to this, she was BT’s Chief Economist, providing economic thinking and analysis to further key commercial, regulatory and strategy goals, wherever required in the BT Group. Emily has previously been a director at a City law firm and, before that, an economic consultant, working for clients in a range of sectors including energy, financial services and communications. In all her roles, Emily has been involved in launching and embedding a range of gender diversity initiatives.

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Nigel Cotgrove

Nigel is a former union officer with over 20 years of experience dealing with pensions.

Nigel is a former union officer with over 20 years of experience dealing with pensions. He was a National Officer of the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) for 31 years until July 2020. In that role, Nigel was the national lead for occupational pensions in telecoms, IT and financial services sectors for two decades. This included negotiating with BT on all pension issues. Nigel has served on the Members’ Panel at the National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) since 2016. Previously he was a member of the Airwave Solutions DC Pension Governance Committee and a Trustee of the CWU 2000 Pension. Nigel was appointed to the Prison Service Pay Review Body in 2023 and is a member of the CWU and the National Federation of Occupational Pensioners.

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Andrew Kerr

Andrew was employed by BT from 1975 to 2008. He served on the National...

Andrew was employed by BT from 1975 to 2008. He served on the National Executive Committee of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) from 1997, and was the President from 1999 to 2008 when he was elected to his current position as Deputy General Secretary (Telecoms and Financial Services). He is responsible for leading negotiations with BT on all occupational matters which has included pensions. Andrew has previously held Trustee positions on the BT Retirement Plan, the National Communications Union (NCU) Staff Superannuation Scheme and was a Governance Committee member of the BT Retirement Saving Scheme. He has a pension from the BT Pension Scheme and is a member of the National Federation of Occupational Pensioners (NFOP).

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Ben Marshall

Ben has been a trustee of a number of pension schemes continuously for over…

Ben has been a trustee of a number of pension schemes continuously for over thirty years and, until his retirement in 2017, was both Chair of the General Federation of Trade Unions Pension Scheme and a member of the board of governance of the Steria Defined Contribution (DC) Scheme since its creation in 2010. He has also been a trustee of the BT Retirement Plan (now replaced by the BTRSS and a Group Personal Pension Plan), and the Accenture AHRS DC Scheme.

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Beryl Shepherd

Beryl was employed by BT from July 1978 until November 2019 and was, until…

Beryl was employed by BT Group from July 1978 until November 2019 and was, until August 2019, the president of the CWU and chair of the National Executive Committee of the CWU. She served on the National Executive Committee of the CWU and the Telecom & Financial Services Executive of the CWU from 2002 until 2019 when she relinquished her responsibilities. Beryl is a pensioner member of the Scheme, a member of NFOP and a member of the CWU.

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David Viles

David retired from his position as Director of Risk, Compliance & Assurance at BT in early 2023.

David retired from his position as Director of Risk, Compliance & Assurance at BT in early 2023. He began his professional career at Arthur Andersen in 1988, firstly as an auditor and then building a number of consulting businesses, mostly related to risk. David subsequently worked at Deloitte and BP plc, holding various senior risk-related roles before joining BT in 2018.

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About Brightwell

Brightwell is the primary service provider (investment advisors, funding and fiduciary management services, covenant oversight, member services, operational and secretariat services) to BTPS.

The Trustees work to ensure that Brightwell provides high quality services to BTPS’ members and Trustees cost-effectively. The services are deliberately tailored to the Scheme’s needs and specific challenges.

Brightwell works closely with BT as the Scheme’s sponsor ensuring there is consistency in serving BT’s current and former employees.

For more information on Brightwell visit brightwellpensions.com

How we invest

Read about our investment objectives and how and where we invest.

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