Gold Co-hosts

IPE European Pension Funds Awards 2013

YOUR ENTRY - OUR COMMITMENT TO HELP
Our simple online entry system will guide you through the process for each Award you wish to enter and we offer comprehensive interactive guidance to help ensure your entry is as strong as possible. We will help you draft your entry on any level and at any stage of the process. This includes conducting interviews and then writing the entry on your behalf. 

Contact Robert Watson for further details and get your entry started: 
Telephone: +44 (0)20 3465 9327
Email: robert.watson@ipe.com   

THE SEARCH FOR EXCELLENCE
Since introducing our online entry process in 2009, the quantity and quality of entries has increased significantly as IPE undertakes its annual Search for Excellence among Europe's richly diverse pension fund industry. We consistently monitor and modify the online entry process to ensure it remains as simple and as streamlined as possible, while increasing the wealth of decisive information we collect for our judges.

Every pension fund in Europe is eligible to enter the IPE European Pension Funds Awards. You do NOT have to be nominated to enter and every fund can enter directly. But whether a pension fund has been nominated or not, every fund has to go through the same entry process. We have made this process as simple as possible through our online system.

THE AWARDS
The IPE Awards are divided into 5 sections:
• Country/Regional
• Themed
• Bronze
• Silver
• Gold

Regional Awards
There are 17 country and regional awards for Best Pension Fund in:
• Austria
• Belgium
• Central & Eastern Europe
• Denmark
• Finland
• France
• Germany
• Ireland
• Italy
• Netherlands
• Norway
• Portugal
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• UK
• Small Countries (with populations under 1 million)

Themed Awards
These are for the pension fund judged to make the best use of different specialist areas:
• Alternative Benchmarks
• Commodities 
• DC/Hybrid Strategy
• Emerging Markets 
• ESG/Corporate Governance
• Hedge Funds
• In-house Investment Team / Best Pension Fund-owned Asset Manager
• Innovation
• Liability Driven Investment
• Real Estate 
• Risk Management Solutions
• Specialist Investment Managers

Bronze Awards
Best fund investing in:
• Alternatives
• Equities
• Fixed Income

European Silver Awards
• Best Corporate Pension Fund
• Best Industry-wide Pension Fund
• Best Public Pension Fund
• Best Small European Pension Fund (with assets under €1bn)

European Gold Awards
• Best European Pension Fund
• Outstanding Industry Contribution
• Pension Fund Personality of the Year
• Long-term Investment Strategy

Nominations
For each country in the Regional Awards section, we ask different areas of the local pensions industry to nominate those pension funds they believe to be ideal candidates for one or more IPE Awards. IPE will then approach all the funds that are nominated and request them to enter the Awards in the usual way by completing our standard entry process.

Country/Regional Awards
All funds entering the IPE Awards are automatically put forward for the 'Best Pension Fund 2012' for their country or region: Austria, Belgium, Central & Eastern Europe, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom or the regional awards for Central & Eastern Europe for funds based in this region. In 2009, IPE introduced the Best Pension Fund Award for European Small Countries with a population under 1 million, such as Cyprus, Iceland, Luxembourg and Malta.

The Country Award winner and the runner-up in each country/region go through to the Gold/Silver awards.

Themed, Bronze and Gold Best Long-Term Investment Strategy Awards
Pension funds have the choice of entering the specialist IPE Themed Awards, the Bronze Awards and the Gold Award for Long-Term Investment Strategy. Funds can enter for as many of these Awards as they wish.

The Bronze Awards are for Alternatives, Equities and Fixed Income.

The Themed Awards, which are subject to change from year to year, are currently: Alternative Benchmarks, Commodities, DC/Hybrid Strategy, Emerging Markets, ESG/Corporate Governance, Hedge Funds, In-house Investment/Pension Fund Owned Asset Manager, Innovation, Risk Management Solutions, Real Estate and Specialist Investment Managers.

The Gold Award is for Long-Term Investment Strategy.

Best Small Pension Fund (€1bn or less) Award
All pension funds with under €1bn in assets that enter the Country or Themed/Bronze Awards are also judged for the Best Small European Pension Fund Award.

Size is not an issue at the IPE Awards. In the past, small funds that have not won Country or Regional Awards have gone on to not only win the Best Small European Pension Fund but also other European level awards such as Best Corporate before progressing to claim the overall title of Best European Pension Fund!

Online Entry
To enter online, all you need to do is visit the dedicated IPE Awards website at www.ipe.com/awards and click the link to Enter for an Award. This will take you through the entry process step by step. The system is user friendly and designed to save you time. You do not need to complete your entry or entries immediately. You may 'save' your entry or entries and return to them as often as you like before you are ready to formally submit by the deadline.

Confidentiality of entries
At the request of the pension funds entering for the IPE Awards, IPE will keep the identity of pension funds confidential, only disclosing the names of winners or runners-up.

The entry that a winning pension fund has submitted will, however, be used for the full article that appears in the IPE Awards Supplement, which is distributed each year on the evening at the Awards and with the subsequent copy of IPE.

How are the IPE Awards judged?
All the entries for a particular country, themed, bronze or the gold best long-term investment strategy are made available online to each judge for that Award. They review and score each entry independently. Their scores are forwarded to IPE to determine the winner and runners-up. If there are pension funds with equal top scores, IPE's practice is to present the award to both funds. If no fund's entry reaches a sufficient standard in the view of the judges, no award is presented.

There are two IPE European Awards that are awarded purely through a nomination process, with the resulting short-list voted on by IPE readers. These are:
• Outstanding Industry Contribution
• Pension Fund Personality of the Year

Up to 100 judges can be involved in the IPE awards. We have a local panel of judges for each Country Award, for Central & Eastern European and for Smaller Countries.

Each Themed, Bronze and the Gold Best Long-Term Investment Strategy Award has its own panel of judges, who are experts in that category and usually based throughout Europe. A separate panel of judges considers entries for the Smaller European Pension Fund Award, as this needs to comprise judges based in different countries to give an all-round assessment.

A special panel of judges is assembled for the European Silver and Gold Awards. This is the largest panel and includes a number of judges who have been judging this award since inception. They each review and mark the entries again, without taking into account how the entry was scored at the Country or Themed/Bronze Award stage.

The judges' view is final and no correspondence or contact between judges and entrants is entertained.

It is inevitable in a business such as ours that conflicts of interest can occur at the judging stage. We rely on our judges to make sure that such factors do not influence their views, but if a serious conflict were to emerge the judge involved would discuss the matter with IPE and probably excuse themselves from judging that particular entry.

You may submit the same entry and/or additional entries for the Country/Regional Awards and/or the Themed Awards. If you do submit the same entry for for your country/region and different themes, it will be judged independently by the relevant judging panels:
• at national/regional level against all other entries from pension funds in your region
• at pan-European level against all other entries for the themes you have chosen.



Silver Co-hosts

Bronze Co-hosts

Seminar Co-host

Co-hosts