The 2014 Pension 40: Amy Kessler

It can be fairly said that no one in the U.S. today is more responsible for pension risk transfer transactions than Prudential Financial’s Amy Kessler, 47. Straight off her run as global head of Pension ALM, or asset-liability management, at Swiss Re in London, where she developed the first longevity insurance product for U.K. pensions, Kessler arrived at Pru in 2009 to bring the lessons she learned while operating in the capital of pension de-risking. She offers a range of risk-mitigating strategies to plan sponsors, from longevity-driven investing to pension buy-ins and buyouts, in which the sponsor off-loads all or part of its pension liabilities to the insurer. In July 2014 she led Prudential’s reinsurance team in the largest-ever longevity-risk transfer transaction, for the BT Pension Scheme, which established its own captive insurer. After earning a BA in economics and a master’s in international economics from Brandeis University, Kessler spent the 17 years through 2007 in debt capital markets at Lazard and Bear Stearns Cos., where she completed more than $40 billion in transactions, including helping sell New York City Recovery Notes issued in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The 2006 passage of the Pension Protection Act inspired Kessler to change sides. “Having solved many fixed-income problems, I wanted to solve pension fund problems,” she says, referring to the pension asset-liability puzzle. “That’s a ton of risk.”

1	2	3	4	5
Bruce Rauner Illinois	John and Laura Arnold Laura and John Arnold Foundation	Randi Weingarten American Federation of Teachers	Rahm Emanuel Chicago	David Boies Boies, Schiller & Flexner
6	7	8	9	10
Randy DeFrehn National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans	Damon Silvers AFL-CIO	Laurence Fink BlackRock	Chris Christie New Jersey	Robin Diamonte United Technologies Corp.
11	12	13	14	15
Ted Eliopoulos California Public Employees’ Retirement System	John Kline Minnesota	J. Mark Iwry U.S. Treasury Department	Gina Raimondo Rhode Island	Phyllis Borzi U.S. Labor Department
16	17	18	19	20
Orrin Hatch Utah	Abigail Johnson Fidelity Investments	Ted Wheeler Oregon	Caitlin Long Morgan Stanley	詹姆斯·霍法 International Brotherhood of Teamsters
21	22	23	24	25
Amy Kessler Prudential Financial	Alejandro García Padilla Puerto Rico	Christopher Klein U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Caifornia	Steven Rhodes Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan	凯文·德莱昂 California
26	27	28	29	30
David Draine Pew Charitable Trusts	Jordan Marks National Public Pension Coalition	Sam Liccardo California	Joshua Rauh Stanford Graduate School of Business	Karen Ferguson and Karen Friedman Pension Rights Center
31	32	33	34	35
Timothy Blake Moody’s Investors Service	Kathleen Kennedy Townsend Center for Retirement Initiatives, Georgetown University	Edward (Ted) Siedle Benchmark Financial Services	Daniel Loeb Third Point	Judy Mares Employee Benefits Security Administration, U.S. Labor Department
36	37	38	39	40
Andrew Biggs American Enterprise Institute	Andy Stern Columbia University	Kenneth Mehlman KKR & Co.	Teresa Ghilarducci New School for Social Research	A. Melissa Moye U.S. Treasury Department