Samantha Pitt

Director

Samantha is a qualified accountant and has been a Pension Trustee since January 2013. She has 25 years’ experience as a Treasury, Corporate Finance and Debt Financing professional gained in a variety of large Corporates; mainly regulated utilities. Samantha joined LawDeb in late 2018.

She has expertise in Debt Financing (predominantly fixed income), Cash/Liquidity Management, Investment Strategy, Financial Risk Management and Corporate Finance (M&A, JV structuring and balance sheet/company restructurings). She uses this expertise to add value to investment discussions.

Prior to LawDeb, Samantha acted as trustee for over 5 years to the Network Rail (NR) £6.5bn DB (part of Railway Pensions Scheme), DC and Career Average (CARE) pension schemes; all open to new entrants and chaired the Investment Committee for the CARE and DC Schemes. Samantha was recently reappointed as Independent Chair of Trustees.

At LawDeb Samantha works across 13 schemes including DB, DC and Hybrid with assets ranging from £45m to over £11bn. She chairs 8 of these schemes including 6 DC schemes, one which she successfully managed 1-2-1 supervision with the Pensions Regulator as part of their engagement with large pension schemes and 2 others are authorised Master Trusts.

She is focused on ESG integration into investments and on improving member engagement and communications through digital solutions, e.g. Apps and member outcome solutions.

She also acts as a NED of The Guinness Partnership (one of the largest Housing Associations) and as Chair of its Audit and Risk and Pensions Committees.

What her past colleagues say:

"Samantha was a Trustee Director of the NR Pension Schemes (NR CARE and NRDC) for a period of just over 5 years. During that time, Samantha also acted as Chair of the Investment Sub Committee and as an employer representative on the Network Rail Pensions Committee of the Railways Pension Scheme.

She showed throughout a significant understanding of the issues that face both defined contribution and defined benefits pension schemes, including setting investment strategy, changing scheme design, understanding regulatory requirements and negotiating with the employer on funding requirements and settling the actuarial valuations. Samantha was also good at challenging advisers and encouraging colleagues on the Board to contribute to debate on key matters.

Finally Samantha showed a great empathy towards beneficiaries of the Schemes to ensure that decisions were made in their best interests."

Mark Engelbretson - Head of Pensions, Network Rail