Iain is Professor of Pensions & Finance, and the founder director of the University’s Centre for Financial Technology and Innovation.

Iain is a recognised internationally as an expert on pensions and retirement savings, most notably on retirement decision-making, pension fund investment, infrastructure investing, sustainable pension systems, trustee governance, and fund management costs and fees. He is widely published in international journals, a key contributor to pension policy and practice, and an expert advisor to a range of businesses, policy makers and organisations.

His current work includes costs and fees in asset management (and industry collaboration with ClearGlass), behavioural biases and annuitization, smart ledgers and collective savings vehicles for pensions, and the application of AI and expert systems in financial services.

Iain is also a lead researcher in the £10m UK Centre for Greening Finance and Investment, led by the University of Oxford with the universities of Bristol, Imperial, and Reading. As part of this project, he is leading on the flagship workstream on pensions and asset management and the development of an innovation hub in Leeds to catalyse an ecosystem for new business formation and commercialisation of climate and environmental risk analytics as a service.

A central feature of Iain’s research is its real-world relevance, and it has been used to advise a range of businesses/policy makers, and he is often cited in the press on issues of pensions, finance, and economics. He has advised organisations including, The CERN Pension Fund, The City of London Corporation, The Work Foundation, The Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association, The Office for National Statistics, and the Financial Conduct Authority, he was the expert advisor to the European Economic and Social Committee on Pan European Pension Products.