Luke Saunders

Close partnering with senior stakeholders across the organisation to provide effective and timely reward advice that supports strategic and operational goals in the hiring, retention, incentivising, and rewarding of employee talent. Directly supporting business strategy through value-add contribution to projects such as M&A activity, legal entity creation, restructures and product launches. Maintaining market alignment of reward structures, remuneration levels, and pay review budgets through continuous improvements in benchmarking, MI data, and third-party advice. Working with LGIM’s CEO, CIO, Investment Desk Heads and Risk & Compliance functions to ensure incentive plans are effective, risk-balanced, and reflect internal and external factors. Ensuring LTIPs remain relevant, motivating and aligned to strategic goals, and achieve Group Remuneration Committee approval. Overall management of the annual pay review cycle for LGIM, including planning (process design, timetabling, and resource allocation); budgeting (budget development and approval the Remuneration Committee); execution and reporting; and all communications. Driving on-going evolution of LGIM’s reward structures through a strong understanding of business needs, including implementation of a fund deferral vehicle. Ensuring compliance with all applicable remuneration regulations by working closely with Compliance & Group Regulatory Risk to understand emerging regulatory matters, review of Code Staff remuneration structures, and completion of all annual reporting. Key contributor to Group-wide Reward projects (Gender Pay Gap reporting, Strategic Benefits Review) and governance processes (Group Remuneration Steering Committee, Group RemCo). Management and mentoring of team resulting in observable progression, an enhanced team profile within and without HR, and outward demonstration of the core L&G behaviours.

A Senior Reward partner to businesses within the Commercial Banking & Consumer Finance divisions. Undertook comprehensive review, redesign and roll-out of incentive plans to meet Group and regulatory direction, including cost and outcome modelling, senior stakeholder management, the preparation of governance papers (including for the Remuneration Committee), and presentations to senior business leaders. Reward lead for the Group Conduct Strategy within Commercial Banking. This included the design and implementation of a consequence management framework, auditing of the Divisional balanced scorecard, and quarterly reporting to the Group Steering Committee. Acted as co-lead for the Commercial Banking annual pay & bonus process. Reward lead for the Divisional implementation of a new Performance Adjustment process, including line manager education.

A trusted senior member of the EMEA Reward team directly contributing to the regional Reward strategy, and providing direction on key projects to ensure alignment with the business strategy. A trusted partner to HR colleagues and internal clients in all global locations. Responsibility for analysing and implementing remuneration regulations, including management of regulatory submissions & disclosures for EU locations, and end-to-end UK FSA Code Staff population management, gaining the trust of this critical, senior population, and mitigating retention risk. Ensured engagement of key stakeholders, company-wide consistency, and continued competitiveness amongst peer organisations. Proactive communication of key issues to the senior executive population (e.g. papers for the global “remuneration committee” and other senior bodies). Governance and policy restructuring to ensure sound risk management, regulatory compliance and that the right strategic/commercial decisions are taken. Design and delivery of new EMEA sales incentive plans to support a major corporate strategic initiative through collaboration with senior executives and other stakeholders. Highly responsive approach and creative thinking to successfully address time-critical business needs in real time, whilst adhering to policy, budgetary and regulatory constraints. Intelligent use of market data to best support compensation decisions at both the individual and budgetary levels, and to aid market competitiveness. Regional co-management of annual compensation process including budget analysis and allocation, factoring in market need, to ensure optimal use of budgets against strategy; and delivery of written and presentational communication with ongoing one-to-one support for senior executives.

Management of annual compensation process, including process design for the UK (within a global framework); intra-HR, management & employee communications; in-depth market analysis to inform budgetary decisions; analysis & reconciliation of employee populations & budgets; close-working with international HR colleagues. Locally managed all other compensation elements, including advising the business and HR colleagues on all reward matters; all non-cash compensation (including deferral/incentive plans; HMRC Form 42 reporting); offer construction (e.g. buy-outs of forfeited compensation). Managed UK participation of compensation surveys as main UK point of contact for survey providers. Reviewed business’s market data needs and partnered with HR Business Partners to ensure accurate consistent job matching. Intelligent analysis of market data to inform compensation decisions. Projects included development of a three-year Reward strategy for UK; a complete review of employment contract and other compensation correspondence; the introduction of a childcare voucher scheme & employee discounts website.