Roy Platten has retired as manager of the Volkswagen (VW) Group Pension Scheme.
Platten left his role at the end of December after 36 years at the VW Group, where he spent the last 14 years as pensions manager.
He has entered semi-retirement and will soon be seeking part-time roles in the pensions or benefits-related space.
During his tenure as scheme manager Platten (pictured) oversaw the investment of 50% of the DC default fund into Standard Life Investment’s Global Absolute Return Strategy (GARS) in 2007. The GARS component of the fund has since been reduced to 25%, with the other 25% in the Barings Multi-Asset fund.
He also oversaw the closure of the VW final salary scheme to future accrual in 2009 without losing any members in the process, and contracting the scheme back into the state second pension in April 2011.
He told portfolio institutional: “I would like to stay in pensions or benefits in some way having done it for the last 14 years. I think by April I will be looking to get back in on a part-time basis.”
Platten has been replaced as scheme manager by Kristy Coogan who joined the company on 10 December as pensions manager, working on a part-time basis.
Prior to joining VW, Coogan was UK pension and benefits manager at auction house Christie’s and before that she worked at Hewitt Bacon and Woodrow, now Aon Hewitt.
Coogan said: “It is massive shoes to fill as the scheme has done a lot of new initiatives early on, which is fantastic.”
She said in terms of her approach to running the scheme it was “business as usual” as it is early days to say anything different, but wanted to continue to make it “market leading”.
“The first six months will be figuring out how the scheme works, who everyone is and getting known within the business,” she added.
The scheme is currently undergoing auto-enrolment duties ahead of its staging date in November and its go-live date on 1 February, 2015.
VW already operated an auto-enrolment policy and so, according to Coogan, only a very small number of employees are not in the scheme compared to other companies.
She added: “Only people who have already opted out in the past are not in the scheme. We are going to have to put those people back in because even though they opted out, it was not under auto-enrolment legislation.”
The Volkswagen Group Pension Scheme won Best Pension Scheme I (under £1bn) at last year’s portfolio institutional awards.
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