APL Conference 2026
Antwerp

Matthew Swynnerton

Matthew Swynnerton is a partner in the London office of Arc Pensions Law and has three decades of experience advising on all aspects of pensions law. He is the current elected Chair of the APL.

Matthew has advised on a number of significant transactions in the pensions risk transfer market, and has developed unrivalled expertise in relation to advising gig economy sector entities on their pensions duties and negotiations with the Pensions Regulator.

He has been described by a leading pensions KC as having "an extensive knowledge of pensions law and practice, very sound legal judgement and good commercial sense” and by clients as being "able to demonstrate a deep knowledge of pensions law which he deploys with great pragmatism".

Matthew has represented the APL as part of a group of 13 industry experts on the technical working group to support the DWP in developing statutory guidance for trustees in relation to their fiduciary duty and investment decision-making in the context of long-term and systemic matters.

Matthew has also been a member of the Pension Scams Industry Group since its inception in 2015, involved with the drafting key legal sections of the Combatting Pension Scams Code of Good Practice, as well as working directly with DWP policymakers on legislation in this complex and evolving area.

Wendy Mathers

Wendy is a member of Radcliffe Chambers and first became involved with pensions law during a secondment in pupillage. Twenty years later it remains a major part of her practice. Wendy's clients include trustees, employers and individual members and the issues on which she advises include points of construction, possible rectification claims, scheme funding, trustees' duties and professional negligence claims. She is a contributor to Tolley’s Pension Law Looseleaf and co-edits the Pensions volume of Halsbury's Laws of England and is recommended as a leading junior in both Chambers and Partners and Legal 500.

Tom Robinson, KC

Tom taught English for a year in Cairo, wasn't very good at it, and now practices as a barrister from Wilberforce Chambers in London. He works in the areas of pensions, insolvency and corporate disputes. He has a particular interest in regulatory matters, having acted for TPR, the FRC and the Dubai Financial Services Authority. He also quite likes cycling.

Mark Baker

Mark advises a range of defined benefit and defined contribution schemes including several of the UK’s leading DC master trusts. He has a close interest in governance models within commercial and multi-employer schemes, the interaction between provider and trustee decision-making, and the extent of trustees’ duties under the emerging guided retirement and CDC regimes. Mark is a member of the Investment and Defined Contribution Committee and previously served on the Legislative and Parliamentary Committee.

He has been with Pinsent Masons since starting as a trainee and over the years has led numerous significant strands of work, including multi-£bn transfers, cutting edge proposition developments and detailed engagements with the Pensions Regulator. Clients praise his practical, collaborative and forward-thinking approach.

Paul Armitage

Paul heads up DC client consulting for Muse, spanning scheme strategy and execution. Typical projects include consultant and provider evaluation and designing in-house scheme governance.

Prior to this Paul was a Partner at XPS responsible for all aspects of the DC Master Trust, and has a career in building national consulting teams. Interesting Fact: I race cars and competed in the Silverstone 24 hour race against the Top Gear team.

Isobel Carruthers

Isobel Carruthers is a Legal Director in the pensions team at Eversheds Sutherland and has spent much of her career helping trustees and employers navigate pensions legislation.

Isobel's interest in the legislative process dates back to her involvement with the APL Investment Sub-Committee, where she contributed discussions with the DWP on the Occupational Pension Schemes (Investment) Regulations 2005. Since then, she has remained actively involved with the Association, serving as APL Secretary for six years, mentoring FLIP for three years and re-joining the Main Committee in 2025. She received the APL Award for Outstanding Contribution in 2022.

Isobel was one of the organisers of the 2019 APL Conference in Edinburgh, where she secured a keynote session by Elizabeth Gardiner, then First Parliamentary Counsel, on the legislative process. The opportunity to hear directly from one of the architects of legislation reflected Isobel's longstanding interest not only in how laws are applied, but also in how they are made, and in the constructive role pension lawyers can play in contributing to better legislation.

Katy Marcus

Chris Edwards-Earl

Chris is a partner specialising in disputes resolution, particularly in relation to pension funds, professional negligence, and regulatory matters. He has considerable experience acting for trustees and employers, parties acting in an interest-based or representative capacity, and for clients pursuing or defending high-value professional negligence actions. He has advised clients on a range of matters concerning: outsourcing disputes; investment based claims; funding; regulatory disputes; solving problems in scheme documents; pension claims in insolvency; cross-border disputes arising out of trusts; breach of contract; and, professional negligence claims.

Naomi Lestrange

Naomi began her career as a pension lawyer (and APL member) at Herbert Smith; in 2003 she went on secondment to government to advise on the moral hazard provisions of the Pensions Act 2004 and then became the first Director of Legal at the Pension Protection Fund. In 2014 she joined 20-20 Trustees, sitting on a number of high-profile trustee boards and acting as Managing Director and then as co-Chief Executive of Vidett. She joined Isio as a Managing Director in 2025. She is also a trained Coach and Counsellor, a keen singer who is part of the team that created the Great Pensions Singalong, and loves wild swimming.

Andrew Spink, KC

Andrew Spink KC has been listed as a leading silk in pensions by Chambers & Partners UK (Band 1) and Legal 500 UK (Tier 1) ever since being appointed KC in 2003.
Having appeared in many of the most significant pensions cases of the last two decades, Andrew remains one of the most prominent and sought-after pensions silks, whether it be in technical Part 8 work, regulatory work, or hard-fought Part 7 pensions litigation, professional negligence or advisory work, all of which are reflected in the cases in which he has been involved. These include IMG, IBM, Pilots, British Telecom, British Airways, Lehman, Honda, Wedgwood, Atos, PSGS Trust Corporation Limited v Aon, The Railways Pension Scheme and Places for People.

Nicolas Stallworthy, KC

Nicolas Stallworthy KC is a barrister specialising pensions law, who has appeared in many of the notable pension cases of the last three decades. He took silk in 2011. He has been a member of the APL since 1998. He served on the Education & Seminars sub-committee from 2006 to 2017; and was elected to the Main Committee in 2017 (serving two consecutive terms of office). Nick has previously spoken at the APL annual conference in 2008 and 2021. Nick acted for Save the Children in Verity Trustees Ltd v Wood and Save the Children.

Jane Kola

Jane has almost 35 years’ experience of advising on all workplace pension arrangements. She has a lot of experience on investment related matters for pension schemes including investment documentation, ESG and the "art of the possible". Her current focus is on DB schemes, buy-in, buy-out, winding-up and surplus but she also works with hybrid schemes on DC investment matters.

Hywel Robinson

Hywel Robinson is a partner at Temple Bright, and has worked in pensions for over 30 years, including many years as the Head of Pensions at Clifford Chance. He is a former Chair of the APL and a current member of the Legislative and Parliamentary Committee.

Simon Evans

Simon Evans is an Of Counsel in the CMS Pensions team specialising in advisory and disputes work. He has spoken before at the APL on regulatory, litigation, winding up and trustee liability issues. More recently he has been working on a number of issues in trustee decision-making over investments, including for schemes with a cross-border element.

Simon enjoys Belgian beer, Belgian chips and has even found a good Belgian whisky. Belgian wine, not so much.

Stuart O'Brien

Stuart has 20+ years’ experience of a broad range of pension related matters, with a particular emphasis on finance and investment issues.
As well as a long track record of advising on buy-ins and buy-outs, and other investment and funding issues, Stuart has been a regular commentator on trustee fiduciary duties and ESG investment. In 2021 he chaired the cross-government and industry group – the Pensions Climate Risk Industry Group (PCRIG) providing early guidance to trustees on managing and reporting climate related risks. He was also part of the Financial Markets Law Committee (FMLC) working group, which provided guidance in 2024 on Pension Fund Trustees and Fiduciary Duties, focusing on sustainability and climate change. More recently he worked with ShareAction and others on proposed amendments to the Pension Schemes Bill to enable a wider consideration of system-level considerations and external impact as part of trustee investment decisions.
Stuart is an active member of the Investment and Defined Contribution Sub-Committee.

David E. Grant, KC

David E. Grant KC specialises in chancery and commercial work, i.e. that undertaken in the Business and Property Courts and equivalent fora in other jurisdictions. He is one of the few members of the Pensions Bar to have appeared in the ECJ and an even smaller cohort to have actually spoken. Significant pensions cases include Stevens v Bell, Foster Wheeler, Catchpole, Beatson v PPF, Safeway, Briggs v Aon, McGaughey v USS and Places for People. Clients include trustees, FTSE firms, members and professional advisers as well as the Secretary for State, PPF, TPR and the Pensions Ombudsman. David is the former chairman of the APL Litigation Sub-Committee and the current secretary of the Pensions Litigation Court Users Committee. At the Chancery Bar Association, he is current head of the academic liaison sub-committee and Seminars Secretary. He has spoken at the 2015, 2018, 2021 and 2024 annual conferences.

Edward Sawyer

Edward Sawyer is recommended as one of the leading pensions junior barristers in the legal directories. He has extensive experience of pensions litigation, advisory work and related professional negligence issues, and has appeared in a number of the most important pension cases of recent times such as Verity Trustees, BBC, Mitchells & Butlers, Lloyds (GMP equalisation), IBM, Merchant Navy Ratings and many others. Edward has also been involved in a number of the leading cases on Pensions Regulator proceedings such as Nortel, Bonas Group Pension Scheme and Box Clever. He advises on all aspects of pensions law and practice.

Jill Clucas

Jill is a Counsel Knowledge Lawyer in Hogan Lovells Cadwalader’s pension team, where she has worked throughout her legal career. She writes weekly Pension Digests for clients and updates the HLC team on latest legal developments. A member of the Legislative & Parliamentary Sub-Committee Tax Group, Jill has been heavily involved with the APL’s responses to the various iterations of the IHT proposals. Jill has previously served on the APL Main Committee and for fourteen years was a trustee of the Hogan Lovells legacy defined benefits pension scheme.
Jill started her career when the Pensions Act 1995 was in its infancy. Since then, constant change in law and regulation has been the theme of her working life. Jill recalls the last time she had an empty in-tray – in 1997, when it lasted for 40 minutes.
Outside work, Jill enjoys gardening, cooking and walking her dog in the Surrey hills.

Susie Daykin

Daniel Watters

Daniel Watters is a Partner in the Pensions and Employee Benefits Group at Arthur Cox LLP and Honorary Secretary of the Association of Pension Lawyers in Ireland (APLI). Daniel advises employers, trustees and pension providers across the full range of pensions law, including scheme restructurings, de-risking exercises, regulatory compliance, disputes and cross-border pension arrangements.

He has led on some of the most significant pensions projects in the Irish market and has particular experience in UK-Ireland cross-border pension issues. Daniel has advised on buy-outs affecting Irish-resident members of UK pension schemes, including the development of bespoke annuity solutions and documentation for complex cross-border arrangements. He also advises insurers and trustees on pension risk transfer transactions and issues arising on the wind-up of schemes with members in multiple jurisdictions.

He is an experienced pensions litigator and has played a leading role in industry engagement on major regulatory developments, including the Irish auto-enrolment regime, IORP II and the Digital Operational Resilience Act.

Charles Magoffin

Charles started practice in Australia where he was held out as a specialist in the slightly (but only slightly) more glamorously named field of superannuation law. He has practiced in England for more than 20 years, was previously a partner at Freshfields and has been a senior counsel at Slaughter and May since 2024. His practice has been very varied, including experience in working for employer sponsors, investors, trustees and financial institutions. He has been around to see a couple of waves of restructuring and insolvency work. He has always fretted about how to answer the “say one interesting fact about myself” question asked for APL conferences as his mind goes blank – so he will just say that he likes eating, drinking and conversation and lots of music, art and reading – and when chatting with someone always wants to know what book they are reading.

Suzanne Burrell

Suzanne Burrell is co-head of the national pensions team at Shoosmiths. She has over 25 years' experience advising trustees and employers on all aspects of occupational pension schemes. She advises both defined benefit and defined contribution schemes ranging from smaller arrangements to schemes with assets exceeding £3 billion.

Her practice covers scheme funding, governance, risk transfer projects, buy-ins and buy-outs, employer covenant issues, benefit change exercises, corporate transactions, scheme mergers and wind-ups. She regularly advises on complex projects including surplus strategy, scheme restructuring and employer reorganisations, member complaints, GMP equalisation, benefit correction exercises and regulatory compliance matters.

She acts for clients across a broad range of sectors and is a member of the Association of Pension Lawyers' Legal & Parliamentary Subcommittee.

Suzanne joined Shoosmiths as a Partner in 2010 after starting her legal career with Mayer Brown and studying law at Oxford University. Outside work, she remains proud of her most unconventional retirement investment: a lifetime pass to Legoland.

Lynette Lewis

Lynette Lewis is co-head of the national pensions team at Shoosmiths. She advises trustees and employers on the full range of UK occupational pension scheme issues as well as supporting her transaction colleagues on a broad range of pension issues. With an earlier career as a corporate lawyer, she brings a commercial and transactional perspective to complex pensions matters, including scheme mergers, buy-ins and buy-outs, liability management, surplus projects, funding and governance issues, and pensions-related disputes. Lynette is known for combining deep technical expertise with practical, business-focused advice and a straightforward, no-nonsense approach. She is particularly valued for helping clients navigate complex legal and regulatory challenges in a clear and pragmatic way. She will be speaking at the 2026 APL Annual Conference on Future Litigation Risks.