ITALY – FondoPoste, the new pension fund for Italian postal workers, has put out to tender mandates for a deposit bank and a fund administrator.

FondoPoste was authorised in July and will offer pensions to an estimated 160,000 non-executive postal workers for the Italian postal system and its subsidiaries, Poste Vita, Sim Poste, SDA express.

The tenders for a deposit bank and a fund administrator must be received by 16:00 hours on October 10. The deposit bank must have no less than five billion euros in assets under custody/administration.

A spokesman for the fund said that the scheme was expected to be officially running by November and that mandates for fund managers would follow.

Initially, FondoPoste will be a monocomparto plan, where there will be a single investment option for all employees. It is foreseen that, after three years, it will then become a multicomparto plan, where members will have more than one choice regarding the investments of their money.