Protheroe: From employee 37 to PPF board member

The chief customer officer’s journey within pensions started before anyone had thought about the creation of the lifeboat fund, but she quickly became intertwined with the organisation.

Ms Protheroe started her career in the civil service graduate programme, with a “desire to help and support people”. She was appointed to the Department of Social Security – the predecessor to the Department for Work and Pensions – and held a variety of tasks.

Knife throwing and pyjama talks

One of them was a stint at the Streatham Jobcentre Plus, “when somebody threw a knife into my wastepaper bin, which was the most frightening thing that happened while I was there”, she tells Pension Expert.

Even in these challenging times we are experiencing at the moment, potential future members can have the confidence that we are here and we will be ready to do whatever is needed to support them

Sara Protheroe, Pension Protection Fund

Shortly after that, Ms Protheroe joined a team working to get a new pensions bill – which led to the Pensions Act 2004 – through parliament.

But before the legislation was ready to be introduced, ministers decided they wanted the rules to include a new organisation to protect pensions, in response to a series of high-profile cases in which pension schemes had wound up with insufficient assets to meet their commitments.

Ms Protheroe was then “borrowed” to be part of a team of three people to create such an organisation.

“It was really exciting, because in those early months there were just the three of us. I can still remember sitting in my pyjamas on Christmas 2003 at my parents’ house on the phone to parliamentary counsel and talking about the laws to create the PPF,” she says.

Since the lifeboat was “at the heart of pensions policy at that time”, Ms Protheroe came into close contact with the then pensions minister Malcolm Wicks, whom she worked for as private secretary.

“When an election was called, I thought: what better to do than to go and actually work for the PPF? I was employee number 37 back in April 2005, and I’ve been with the PPF ever since,” she says.

From levy payers to members

Initially, Ms Protheroe was responsible for the PPF levy, “which was quite challenging in the early days, because employers needed to get used to paying this sum of money; it seemed like a tax to them”, she notes.

Having been instrumental in introducing the insolvency risk-based feature to the levy, it came to a point where she wanted to get closer to members.

“For me, that is what motivated me when I first got involved with the PPF, and when I was working for the pensions minister I was lucky enough to meet some of the members who have benefited both from the Financial Assistance Scheme and the PPF,” she says.

She was appointed director of customer experience in 2011, leading work on the insourcing and improvement of the PPF’s member services.

“I could never have imagined, when I first started, that we would have an organisation of about 400 people, looking out after 400,000 members, with more than £32bn in assets and really strong reserves, which mean we can be there for members both now and for how long they need us,” she says. 

“I’m proud of the way we are now a tried-and-tested part of the pensions industry, and even in the challenging times we are experiencing at the moment, potential future members can have the confidence that we are here and we will be ready to do whatever is needed to support them.”

Despite having her dream job, Ms Protheroe would like to help the “minority of smaller schemes that may struggle to meet their liabilities over time, and the potential need to consolidate and bring those schemes together”.

“There is a problem I would love to be part of solving, but for the time being it’s not part of the remit of the PPF,” she adds.