How your fund enters the IPE Awards

HOW TO ENTER THE COMPETITION

• Download our IPE 2010 Awards supplement
• Click Here to Register to attend
• Click Here to Submit your entry (deadline for entries 24th September 2010)

Every pension fund in Europe is eligible to enter the IPE Awards 2010. You do NOT have to be nominated to enter (see panel) 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: www.ipe-awards.com.

Nomination:
For each country, where we offer an IPE Country Award, we ask different areas of the local pensions industry to nominate those pension funds they reckon should be considered for an IPE Award. IPE will approach all funds nominated in this way and request them to enter the Awards, which will require them to complete our standard entry process.

Country/Regional Awards:
All funds entering are put forward for the IPE Country Award for 'Best Pension fund 2010', for their country: Austria, Belgium Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
An Award is presented for the Best Pension Fund in the Central & Eastern Europe for funds based in this region.
IPE introduced in 2009 the Best Pension Fund Award for European Small Countries with a population under 1 million, such as Cyprus, Luxembourg and Malta.
The Country Award winner and the runner-up in each country go through to the European-level awards.

Themed and Bronze Awards:
Pension funds have the choice of entering or not for the specialist IPE Themed and Bronze Awards. These are Bronze Awards for Equities, Fixed Income and Alternatives. The specialist areas of the IPE Themed Awards are: Commodities, DB/DC Structuring, ESG/Corp[orate Governance, Hedge Funds, Best In-house Investment/Pension Fund Owned Asset Manager, Innovation, Risk Management Solutions, Real Estate, and Specialist Investment Managers. Funds can enter for as many of these Awards as they wish. There is a special section for the fund to describe its expertise under each category entered.

Best Small Pension Fund (€1bn or less) Award:
All pension funds with under €1bn in assets, whether entering for Country or Themed/Bronze Awards, are also put into a special group to be considered separately for the Best Small European Pension Fund Award. Of course, they also continue to be considered for the Country and Themed/Bronze Awards that they are entering.
It has happened that such a small-sized fund, which has not won a Country or Themed/Bronze Award, has gone on not only to win the Best Small European Pension Fund Award, but also other European level awards (such as Best Corporate) and then progress to win the overall Best Euro- pean Pension Fund Award!

Online Entry
The entry process is done online – all you need to do is to go the IPE Awards entry site www.ipe-awards.com In brief, for the IPE Country Awards we ask pension funds for a short description of the fund's objectives and strategy, with some headline figures. We also require funds to give a short update on any action taken on both pensions governance and investment strategy. We ask funds to describe in more detail an area where they feel the fund has have done something special and made its mark or excelled so as to highlight its expertise and achievements.

Confidentiality of entries
It has always been the case that IPE kept the identity of pen- sion funds entering the IPE Awards confidential, only dis- closing the names of winners or runners-up. Whether a pension fund enters the awards directly as in the past or is nominated under the new arrangement, IPE will continue to maintain the confidentiality of the entries on the same basis as before. The reason is that most pension funds tell us that they only want their identity disclosed should they be an award winner or a runner-up.
The entry details that a winning pension fund has submitted will be used to prepare the full description that will appear in the IPE Awards 2010 supplement that is distributed each year on the evening at the Awards and with the next copy of IPE.

How are the IPE Awards judged?
All the entries for a particular country or theme are sent to the panel of judges, who review and score each entry independently. Their scores are totalled to determine the winner and runners-up. If there are pension funds with equal top scores, IPE's practice is to make the award to both funds. If no fund's entry reaches a sufficient standard in the view of the judges, then no award is presented.

There are two IPE European Awards – Outstanding Industry Contribution and Consultant of the Year – that are awarded purely through a nomination process, with the result- ing shortlist voted on by IPE readers.

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

Each Themed and Bronze award has its own panel of judges, who are competent in the area and usually based in different countries around Europe. A separate panel of judges considers en- tries 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 mark the entry 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, we would expect the judge involved to discuss the matter with IPE.

WHY ENTER & GUIDELINES

A Swedish fund, which had won a number of Awards over a number of years, said that while winning had very positive results in terms of public relations and human resources, “the real value was in our relations with our members”.

A UK-based fund reckoned that winning shows what is innovative about what the fund is doing. In their case, winning had benefits for relations with the fund’s sponsors and internally it was very good for morale. “Our staff like the recognition that they are doing a good job.”

An Italian winner said that receiving an IPE Award had been helpful for them in getting their message across.  “You collect something you can show.”

HELPFUL POINTS TO ENTER:

Judges and past Awards winners give their views on how best to go about entering your funds in the IPE European Pension Funds Awards:

1.    The format of the IPE Awards asks entrants to submit in 750 words details of ‘an activity in which they have excelled during the 18 months period of January 2009 to June 2010’.  This is deliberately left open so as to encourage entrants to think widely about what could be the subject matter of an award entry. Any aspect of pension funds’ operations from investment and benefits to structure and governance can be included.

2.    One important point from the judges was that the activity should be something, as one put it, that made the fund ‘stand out from the crowd’, regarding either the topic (for example, the investment process) or how it was implemented.

3.    Also important was that the fund should give an explanation as to what they saw as their real achievement in the area in which they excelled.

4.    They should set out their intended objectives and how they were achieved.  Also, if there were any difficulties or objections how these were overcome could be described.

5.    They should be as factual as possible as to how they present their case, for example by giving figures as to performance, cost savings, risk reduction etc, if possible.

6.    Probably (in most, but certainly not in all cases), it was felt that where the fund had achieved something already, this would count for more in the judges’ eyes than an entry that focussed on everything being planned for the future.

7.    It was important to remember that entries for the Themed and European level Awards would be looked at by judges outside your own country, so you should make sure that the achievements you are writing about are explained in such a way that they can be appreciated by someone outside your own country. So if some developments relating to your fund relate to an issue such as high interest rates or lack of a bond market that is particular to your country, this needs to be explained so that non-local judges understand.

8.    The judges stressed the need to explain things in as straightforward a way as possible, with technical words being included as appropriate. The danger with too technical descriptions is that not all judges may be able to understand exactly what the fund is saying.

9.    Be aware of focusing on topical, fashionable or ‘hot’ issues instead of picking on some more day-to-day issue that your fund really tackled well and so could make a strong entry topic for your fund.

10.     It is quite in order to enter a topic again that you have submitted in a previous year, which you consider is still important and relevant, but of course the information relating to it would need to be updated.
 

RULES, TERMS & CONDITIONS

RULES
•    It would assist IPE tremendously if you enter the awards in English but you may enter using your own language. All entries will be treated equally whether in English or another language.
•    There is no limit to the number of entries per fund.
•    The IPE Awards is open to all pension funds and group retirement savings plans based in European countries.
•    The closing date for entries is September 24.
•    Entries must be submitted by email using the official Word entry form. Supporting documents whether electronic or hard copy will not be accepted and will not be passed to the judges.

TERMS & CONDITIONS
•    The judges’ decision will be final. IPE will not enter into any correspondence regarding any aspect of the judging process.
•    If your entry is either short-listed for an award or wins an award you automatically give IPE the right to publish all or part of your entry.
•    IPE will not publish the names nor publish any part of the entry of those funds which enter the awards but are not short-listed or do not win.
•    Each fund must provide IPE with a copy of their logo (if they have one) regardless of whether they are either short-listed for or win an award. IPE will only use the logos for those funds which are either short-listed for an award or win an award.
•    Logos must be supplied high resolution (300dpi) in the following formats: jpeg, tiff, eps.
•    IPE will not inform in advance those entries which are either short-listed for an award or win an award. The winners for all categories, as well as those short-listed for silver and gold awards will be announced for the first time at the IPE Awards 2010 held in Monaco on December 7th 2009.

FAQ - FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How does IPE select the judges?
Many of the judges have been involved since the first IPE Awards in 2001. We originally approached a mixture of local and international consultants based on their reputation. Since 2001, several consultants have approached IPE and asked if they can be included and we have agreed. Our view is that the more judges there are the better the judging process will be.

Why are consultants asked to be the judges – why not pension funds?
Generally speaking, consultants have a good overview of the standards of pension funds in their country based on their exposure to a range of clients. We prefer not to ask pension funds to judge because they might feel unable to enter their own funds for the awards.

Are consultants biased towards their own clients?
Consultants usually refuse to judge entries submitted by their own clients. They judge the entries of pension funds who use other consultants and those who do not use consultants. IPE believes that the vast majority of consultants are professional enough not to allow any bias into the judging process.

How can judges compare entries from large and small funds presenting distinctly differing processes?
There has to be a certain amount of subjective analysis. It simply is not possible to create a purely quantitative scoring system which will identify the best pension fund in any one market or the best example of a particular strategy. One of the reasons that IPE asks local consultants to be judges on a market-by-market basis is because they are best placed to make an intelligent judgement based on their local expertise.

Why don’t you publish the full results of the judging process?
From the very start, pension funds have told IPE that they do not want publicity if they enter but do not win an Award. Because of this, we decided to keep entries confidential and only publish the names of those who have won or been short-listed for an Award. There may come a time when the majority of pension funds will be prepared to enter the IPE Awards openly but we will continue to respect their requirement for anonymity for the foreseeable future.

How many funds can I enter?
Many corporations and some public sector funds are responsible for managing more than one pension fund. You may, for instance, have a primary defined benefit fund and a newer defined contribution fund. Or you may be managing different company funds within one group. You may enter as many of these funds as you wish (at either Country and/or Themed Award level) so long as you take care to explain the differences. However, we will not accept multiple entries from insurance companies running institutional insured funds.

Can I enter using my own language?
Yes. The IPE Awards has always allowed pension funds to enter using their own language because all the Country Awards are judged by local consultants. Winning entries are then translated into English for the European judges who come from a variety of countries. However, it will greatly assist IPE if you enter in English because we also have to translate the entries into English for the Themed Awards.