Paul Neville, director of digital, data and technology at The Pensions Regulator (TPR), is building strong IT foundations as part of a five-year strategy to help transform the organisation from a compliance-based to a risk-based regulator. He explains what that change will mean in practice over the next few years.
“As a regulator, we’ll obviously still have specific processes we expect people to follow, but we’ll be much more concerned about the outcome that we’re trying to achieve, and we’ll make decisions based on that demand,” he says.
“To make that shift, we need to understand our data. We need to have the right level of automation to explore information, measure outcomes, and deliver those outcomes with industry and other government bodies interested in pensions. We imagine a future world in which information flows between organisations.”
A historian by education, Neville entered the world of business as the internet boom gathered pace in the 1990s. Describing himself as a self-taught digital leader, he developed his skills in the commercial sector at blue-chip companies such as Sky and BT, and with startups and smaller businesses.
His transformation work in larger firms focused on delivering big technology-enabled change programmes, centred on boosting customer experiences. Mid-career, he decided to apply those skills for public benefit and worked as a consultant for two major charities, Marie Curie and Macmillan, helping those organisations to transform digitally.
Neville then turned to the public sector to apply his skills in another for-good area. He worked in digital leadership roles at the London Borough of Waltham Forest, UK Export Finance and Enfield Council, before joining TPR in October 2023. Neville reflects on this final move.
“It was the opportunity to take all of that experience and deliver on a national scale and impact everybody, because almost everyone has a pension, and the opportunity to make that process work for the citizens of this country, and make a difference for people in retirement, is a massive issue,” he says.
“Secondly, the chief executive, my boss, Nausicaa Delfas, was setting up an opportunity to change, not only TPR, but the pensions industry, so the role felt like a chance to be a central part of that journey, because not every CIO gets to sit on the board of an organisation.”
Transforming processes
Neville reflects on the transformation journey at TPR, saying it’s been an exciting ride: “Everyone on the executive board is aligned on the fact that digital, data and technology are the key enablers for helping us change as an organisation, and also helping the pensions industry transform.”
Late last year, Neville launched a digital, data and technology strategy, a set of missions over a five-year plan to renew TPR’s capabilities, embracing new ways of working, driving efficiency, automation and innovation. In March this year, he launched the data component of the strategy, which establishes a collaborative plan to drive adoption of new data technologies and standards.
“I am proud of that strategic work,” he says. “That effort includes strengthening our technology foundations, improving our capability in terms of automation, and making sure we have the skills in my team to develop the future. We’ve hired quite a lot of people and also consolidated similar skills across the organisation, and that’s enabled us to deliver more and save money on suppliers, because we’ve done a lot in-house.”
Neville says the projects his team has worked on include delivering artificial intelligence (AI) tools that help increase automation. They’ve also focused on improving cyber security and data governance to ensure safe and secure access to high-quality internal information.
The team also recently launched an innovation service to foster conversations with industry stakeholders. Neville says TPR is encouraging and enabling people and organisations to think differently about the services they deliver to their customers and the benefits they provide.
“That’s just a small selection of the things we’ve done so far,” he says. “We’ve got just under four years left of the plan. There’s a lot more we want to do, but we have built the confidence, both internally and externally, that we are a different TPR and we can deliver. That encourages everyone in our industry to think differently as well.”
Building foundations
Neville says the transformation work enabled through the strategy so far is focused on building the right technological foundations at TPR.
In addition to cyber security and data governance projects, his team has focused on service management initiatives that help TPR rationalise its application estate. The organisation has adopted an agile, product-based approach to deliver reusable capabilities for flexible services in key areas related to pensions governance within the organisation and externally.
TPR is also making progress on automation, including in case management. He inherited a situation where cases were often managed on spreadsheets or via one-off technology solutions. In short, nothing was joined up. Neville is using automation, via Microsoft Dynamics 365, to take a different approach.
“Everyone on the executive board is aligned on the fact that digital, data and technology are the key enablers for helping us change as an organisation, and also helping the pensions industry transform”
Paul Neville, The Pensions Regulator
“We’re delivering a single case management system,” he says. “We are working to make sure the process is streamlined, so we’re thinking about the business process first. By taking that approach, we can deliver in an agile and iterative way. Where we’ve already rolled that technology out, we’ve delivered productivity savings of around 60%.”
Neville expects the progress made through case management automation to be repeated in other areas. As automation takes hold in the organisation, he anticipates people will spend less time on paperwork and more time delivering better services.
Given the developments in the technology sector during the past few years, AI is playing a key role.
“We are deploying AI to specific use cases,” he says. “I’ve got a fantastic data science team, who are developing lots of very clever tools for us.”
Embracing AI
Neville says the next two years will be spent honing these technology initiatives and delivering tangible results.
Critical projects include implementing organisation-wide access to data via Dynamics 365 services and completing transformation projects in core areas, such as cyber security and data governance. It’s these foundations and the application of emerging technology that will help TPR transform from a compliance-based to a risk-based regulator.
Two years from now, Neville expects all foundational work, from case management to customer relationship management (CRM) systems, will be embedded within the organisation. On these foundations, employees will use AI-enabled tools to boost their working processes.
“That preparatory work will enable us in the future to create more customer-facing digital capabilities,” he says.
One example of where TPR is applying AI is analysing online news sites to scan for potential risks in pension schemes. Neville saw AI could provide a helping hand to what is currently a manually intensive process.
“That’s a great example, because many pension schemes don’t have the same name as the provider,” he says. “The technology does quite a lot of joining up behind the scenes to make that process work.”
Another example is using AI to analyse Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) statements, which organisations must submit to comply with legislation. Once again, generative technology – in the form of OpenAI and Microsoft Azure technology – is helping TPR staff summarise lengthy prose and create insights as a basis for intervention when required.
“Those are just two examples,” says Neville. “We’ve got other risk tools that we’re using. We are also rolling out Copilot internally, and we’re in the middle of our plan for that technology. We’re trialling GitHub Copilot for our developers, and they’re starting to write test scripts, which is fun. We’re still at the beginning of this work, as are lots of people, but these projects are a taster of what we want to achieve.”
Solving challenges
Neville says the result of this work will be that the future TPR will have an operating environment that differs greatly from its traditional, manually intensive processes. Today, the organisation maintains a digital portal, where people send, for example, pension scheme returns as part of a large, intensive data upload. Neville foresees a better approach.
We need to understand our data, and so does the industry. The firms need to provide better customer experiences for people, like you and me, who have pensions Paul Neville, The Pensions Regulator
“There won’t necessarily be a scheme return like you see today, because we will have the information we need, and organisations across the industry will be more digitally enabled, so they’re able to drive the kind of innovation and competition in the market that will benefit savers, people with pensions and employers that offer pensions,” he says.
This new level of digital interaction will make it easier for TPR and organisations in the pensions sector to tackle some of the thorny issues of the day. One of these issues is adequacy, or the extent to which people save enough money in pension schemes for their retirement.
“We need to understand our data, and so does the industry. The firms need to provide better customer experiences for people, like you and me, who have pensions. By driving a customer focus, we think the industry will perform better,” he says.
“We may even feel a bit like a fintech as an organisation, because we’ll be enabling innovation. Technology will produce the insights we need to work with the industry. So, we could be operating in a completely different world, which drives innovation and change for everyone.”
Neville continues to seek ways to push transformation forward. He recently helped launch the Pensions Data and Digital Working Group, which will help ensure TFP and the pension industry work together to embrace digital, data and technology and achieve the digitalisation and automation aims outlined in the five-year strategy.
“The working group has 15 members,” he says. “It represents a cross-section of people from different parts of industry, so trustees, actuaries, lawyers, but also people from more technical backgrounds as well. It’s about getting all kinds of people involved to help solve the problems and move to this new world.”
Both left and right-wing accounts claimed, without evidence, that the attack was staged.
President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and dozens of other high-profile administration officials and journalists were attending the dinner at the Hilton hotel in Washington, DC, when a suspect, later identified by media reports as Cole Tomas Allen from California, allegedly ran past security towards the event. He was detained by law enforcement while the president and vice president were evacuated. Police said that they believe Cole acted alone, but did not expand on who his intended target was or what his motive may have been. “We believe the suspect was targeting administration officials,” acting attorney general Todd Blanche told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday morning.
On Bluesky, which has a predominantly left-leaning user base, many people simply wrote the word “STAGED” over and over again, echoing the response to the Trump assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania in 2024.
On X, many claimedthe shooting was staged as a way to bolster support for Trump’s plan to build a new ballroom in the White House. The president referenced the ballroom in a press conference after the incident and a Truth Social post on Sunday morning. Many prominent online Trump boosters echoed the need for the ballroom, including far-right podcaster Jack Posobiec, Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik, and Tom Fitton, the right-wing activist who runs Judicial Watch.
Their quick response, conspiracy theorists claimed, was evidence of a coordinated campaign following the shooting. “Is this another staged event,” one X user asked in a post that has been viewed more than 5 million times.
Other social media users who claimed the incident was staged pointed to a Fox News clip that featured the station’s White House correspondent Aishah Hasnie speaking from the Hilton hotel. Hasnie told viewers that prior to the shooting, press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s husband allegedly told her “you need to be very safe,” before the call was cut off.
“Fox News just cut one of their reporters off as they seemed to indicate the shooting was a pre-planned false flag,” one X user wrote in a post that has been viewed more than 2 million times. Hasnie later clarified in an X post that her cell service had cut out in a location with notoriously bad service, adding: “He was telling me to be careful with my own safety because the world is crazy. He was expressing his concern for my safety.”
“I don’t want to be fomenting conspiracies,” wrote Angelo Carusone, the chair and president of Media Matters, on Bluesky about the Fox News interview. “But I mean…this was super weird. Super weird.”
Leavitt herself was also the focus of conspiracy theories after she said “shots will be fired” in an interview ahead of the dinner, referring to the jokes Trump was scheduled to deliver. Following the attack, X users claimed the comment was “strange,” “sus,” or a “curious choice of words,” while sharing memes that suggested the shooting was staged. At least one mainstream outlet appeared to amplify the conspiracy theory as well, describing Leavitt’s comment as “eerie” and “bizarre.”
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A 31-year-old engineer and computer scientist was identified by media reports and President Donald Trump as the suspected shooter at the White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday night.
Cole Tomas Allen, of Torrance, California, was apprehended following the firing of shots at the Washington Hilton, where Trump was scheduled to deliver remarks to a ballroom full of journalists, cabinet officials, and Hilton staff. Allen’s name surfaced in media reports shortly before Trump posted two photos of a suspect following his apprehension. The person in the photos Trump posted matches photos of Allen.
In dramatic scenes, several shots were heard outside the ballroom, after which Trump and Vice President JD Vance were immediately rushed off the stage by the United States Secret Service. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting incident, it briefly appeared as if the event would proceed—Trump posted “LET THE SHOW GO ON” on Truth Social—but the event was eventually shut down.
According to the Metropolitan Police Department, the suspect “charged” a Secret Service checkpoint at the Hilton hotel, and was intercepted by agents. MPD interim chief Jeffery Carroll said the suspect was carrying a “shotgun, handgun, and multiple knives.”
At a White House press conference following the shooting, Trump said one United States Secret Service agent was shot but saved from serious injury by his bulletproof vest. Trump said the agent, who was not named, is “doing great” and in “great shape.” No other injuries were immediately reported.
The suspect was later transported to a local hospital “to be evaluated,” according to Carroll, who said he appears to be a “lone actor.”
Around the time Trump’s press conference began on Saturday night, he posted a picture on his Truth Social account appearing to show the suspected shooter on the ground, with his hands restrained behind his back, and a foil warming blanket covering the lower half of his body.
A WIRED review of public databases shows a seemingly minimal online presence associated with Allen’s name. According to his LinkedIn profile, he graduated from Caltech in 2017 with a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering and from California State University Dominguez Hills in 2025 with a master’s in computer science. An apparent photo of Allen that appears on Caltech’s website identifies him as a member of the school’s Mechanical Engineering 72 class, described by the school as a “two-term engineering design lab” for building robots and autonomous vehicles. His name is also listed in a 2025 Dominguez Hills graduation program. A search in a public facial recognition database returns only two images, both apparently of him as an undergraduate.
According to the alleged shooter’s LinkedIn profile, he has been employed part-time since March 2020 at C2 Education, a private company that helps students prepare for the SAT and ACT exams. In December 2024, C2 Education said in posts on LinkedIn and Facebook that he was the company’s “December Teacher of the Month.”
Since 2018, the suspected shooter has self-identified on his LinkedIn profile as a “self-employed” indie game developer. He appears to have released an “atomic fighting game” called Bohrdom on Steam in 2018. The game was advertised using accounts on YouTube and X that appeared to have little to no following. The caption for a trailer of the game describes it as a “non-violent, skill-based, asymmetrical fighting game loosely based on a chemistry model that is itself loosely based on reality.”
C2 Education and did not immediately respond to requests for comment. When reached for comment, the Metropolitan Police Department referred WIRED to a video of its public press conference.
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