Charles originally joined Mercer’s Liverpool office in 1984 and subsequently became a Worldwide Partner before leaving Mercer to join JLT Benefit Solutions in 2007, where he became their Chief Actuary. He subsequently re-joined Mercer last year, when they acquired JLT, and is now Mercer Chief Actuary. Charles has acted as principal actuarial adviser to several multinational companies and their pension schemes and has advised on global de-risking projects.

Charles has pioneered the use of modern corporate finance techniques in actuarial work and advised the trustees of the Boots pension scheme on their ground-breaking switch into a 100% bond investment strategy. He is a member of the Council of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and has chaired their Pensions Board and their International Board. Charles is the author of a number of research papers and was also Chairman of the UK Actuarial Profession's Discount Rate Steering Committee which led the Actuarial Profession's research into the use of discount rates.

Charles is the UK’s pension representative at the Actuarial Association of Europe and the International Actuarial Association where he chairs the Pensions and Employee Benefits Committee. Charles is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries. He has a BSc from Durham University and he is also a Chartered Mathematician, a Chartered Scientist and a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.