Mandate roundup: University of Edinburgh, Berkshire Pension Fund, AP3

The University of Edinburgh is looking for companies to provide administrative, actuarial and investment services for its Staff Benefits Scheme (SBS) over a five-year period, according to a notice on the official EU tenders service TED.

The UK university said the scheme’s trustees regularly reviewed all their service providers as a matter of good practice, to continue getting good value for money on behalf of members.

The contract, due to start on 1 April next year and last until the end of March 2020, is being divided into lots, and tenders can be submitted for one or more lots, the university said.

It said service providers bidding for the pension administration services, actuarial services and investment services contracts had to have experience of working with similarly-sized schemes.

The university said it envisaged inviting five firms to tender or participate.

The deadline for tenders or requests to participate is 15 September.

In other news, UK local authority the Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead is searching for a manager to implement a currency overlay programme for its pension fund, according to a tender notice on TED. 

The Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead is the administering authority to the Royal County of Berkshire Pension Fund.

The contract is estimated to be worth between £150,000 (€187,000) and £300,000, the council said in the notice.

The resulting mandate is set to start on 1 April 2015 and run until the end of March 2020.

Tenders or requests to participate must be received by 4 September.

Meanwhile, AP3 – Sweden’s third national pensions buffer fund – has picked market data firm SuperDerivatives to supply it with investment analysis and valuation via its DataX product.

AP3 will also be using DGX, SuperDerivatives’ real-time market data, news and analysis terminal.

Mattias Bylund, chief risk officer at AP3, praised SuperDerivatives, saying it provided the best guarantee of accurate market data, having supplied data for a range of financial products and markets for more than a decade.