Norfolk County Council is preparing to launch a national framework for the UK local government pension schemes (LGPS) for the provision of investment performance and cost monitoring and reporting services, a move initially fuelled by State Street’s decision to drop its benchmarking service for the LGPS sector.

Norfolk County Council – acting on behalf of itself, four other local authority pension fund administering bodies and one asset pool* – communicated its intention to the market by way of a prior information notice last week.

Nigel Keogh, national LGPS frameworks manager at Norfolk County Council, told IPE the group began discussing launching a new framework after State Street decided to discontinue its local authority pension fund universe analysis service.

Over time, however, “the conversation moved on to cover related services”.

Keogh added: “The requirements have been expanded to cover the areas such as portfolio monitoring for individual funds and potentially for the LGPS pools, and also investment cost-monitoring services.

“And so we are wrapping up those individual strands into a new framework.”

State Street no longer provides investment benchmarking to the LGPS generally, having since March 2016 discontinued its performance-measurement services for third-party clients in the UK and the Netherlands.

Keogh said the new framework agreement would be multi-lot and multi-provider.

As with other national frameworks, this one would be accessible to all LGPS, with a view to making it attractive for the asset pools being formed as well.

“We are hoping to frame this in a way such that LGPS pools can access those services should they wish to,” said Keogh.

The procuring group aims to issue an invitation to tender in early November. 

[Updated] Nick Wright, head of global services UK, State Street, told IPE that although State Street decided to stop offering its performance measurement services on a standalone basis to third party local authority clients in the UK, it is still providing these to clients that subscribe to its asset services as part of the provider’s focus on the “end-to-end solution”. 

* Carmarthenshire County Council, Essex County Council, the London CIV, Staffordshire County Council and Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council

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