Norfolk County Council has formally put a contract out to tender seeking managers for a framework agreement to provide passive investment management services, primarily intended to be for the local government pension schemes (LGPS), including emerging asset pools.

According to the tender announcement, the contract – to be made with several operators, the council says – has an estimated value in terms of fees and charges of between £20m and £140m (€24m-166m) over the whole 48-month duration of the agreement.

Norfolk County Council, which has been overseeing the National LGPS Frameworks, announced in mid-June that it was soon to launch a procurement exercise for passive management.

Norfolk put out the the tender on its own behalf and that of five other local authorities and local authority pension funds - Essex Pension Fund, Hampshire, Kent, Northamptonshire and Suffolk County Council, although the framework might also be used by other parties, including any administering authority within the LGPS, the Pension Protection Fund or any other public sector pension scheme. It is also open to the asset pools that are being set up by the LGPS.

The agreement is for passive investment management including the tracking of “a broad range of generic, non-proprietary, traditional and alternatively weighted equity and bond indices”.

The deadline for receipt of tenders or requests to participate is 7 October.

In other news, the Norwegian municipality of Bærum has put out a tender notice seeking consultancy services to help it assess the quality of pensions provision for its employees.

The winner of the contract will help Bærum with an “impartial quality assurance of pensions” from Bærum kommunale pensjonskasse, Statens pensjonskasse (SPK) and KLP.

The municipality has a pension scheme for staff managed across these three providers, with teachers covered by Statens pensjonskasse, nurses by KLP and other employees by Bærum kommunale pensjonskasse. 

The contract is to start on 1 January 2017 and run until the beginning of 2022.

The deadline for receipt of tenders or requests to participate is 10 October.

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