Business
Standard Life : Gail Izat appointed Chief Operating Officer for Standard Life’s Pensions & Savings business
Standard Life : Gail Izat appointed Chief Operating Officer for Standard Life’s Pensions & Savings
About this update from Standard Life Plc
Gail Izat appointed Chief Operating Officer for Standard Life's Pensions & Savings business 30 April 2026 News and Views Press releases Gail Izat appointed Chief Operating Officer id Emma Furlonger appointed Interim Managing Director for Workplace and Retail Intermediary Gail Izat has been appointed to the newly created position of Chief Operating Officer (COO) for Standard Life's Pensions & Savings business. In the role Gail will be responsible for leading the delivery of the unit's strategy, transformation, integration and risk activity. The role of COO will be particularly important given Standard Life's ambitious growth plans for the P&S business, following the acquisition of Aegon UK. Pensions & Savings is one of the two key business units within Standard Life and supports customers saving through their employer, with the help of a financial adviser or on their own through its Workplace, Retail Intermediary and Retail Direct trading channels respectively. Each of these markets is structurally growing and a strategic priority for Standard Life and, today, Pensions & Savings manages c.£212bn of assets on behalf of its customers. Gail has been Managing Director for Workplace since 2019 and more recently took on responsibility for the Retail Intermediary channel. Emma Furlonger will take up this role on an interim basis, until a formal recruitment process has completed. Emma has worked closely with Gail since 2021 most recently as Workplace Trading Director. Emma's appointment ensures continuity of leadership for the two business areas, both of which have significant momentum. In 2025, Standard Life's Workplace business recorded net inflows of £5.3bn and added nearly 250,000 new customers. In recent years there has been a renewed emphasis on the Retail Intermediary channel where Standard Life has a number of strengths including its off platform SIPP, bond range, smoothed fund propositions and annuity offer. Commenting on the appointments, Angela Byrne, CEO of Pensions & Savings at Standard Life said: "These appointments are a recognition of the impact that both Gail and Emma have made at Standard Life. Under Gail's leadership Standard Life has become a top three player in Workplace and has set out a clear direction for our Retail Intermediary offer. In her new role she will look more broadly at how we deliver the P&S strategy ...