Industry specific software package

Description

The City of Edinburgh Council is administering authority of the Local Government Pension Scheme in Scotland for the Lothian area. Lothian Pension Fund (LPF) carries out specialist activities of investing assets (approximately 7 000 000 000 GBP) and administering benefits of three funds on behalf of over 100 contributing employers and over 80 000 members. As part of the delivery of investment services, internal portfolio managers undertake equity and bond dealing regularly. This is currently managed using a fully manual system utilising Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets. Having adequate internal systems and controls is a requirement of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), particularly in the case of Lothian Pension Fund’s regulated investment company, LPFI Limited. LPF therefore requires an effective and fully functioning “Investment Front Office Software System” in order to ensure the efficiency of its investment management function, whilst at the same time satisfying regulatory requirements. The City of Edinburgh Council (The Council) is the administering authority of the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) in Scotland for the Lothian area. Lothian Pension Fund (LPF), which is not a separate legal entity from the Council, carries out the specialist activities Of investing the assets (approximately 7 000 000 000 GBP) and administering the benefits of three funds – Lothian Pension Fund, Lothian Buses Pension Fund and Scottish Homes Pension Fund – on behalf of over 100 contributing employers and over 80 000 members. LPF also collaborates with other LGPS funds on various projects and it is anticipated that this collaborative activity will continue into the future. As part of the delivery of investment services to LPF, the internal portfolio managers undertake equity and bond dealing regularly. This is currently managed using a fully manual system utilising Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. Dealing activity amounts to several hundred million pounds in a typical year. Collaboration with other LGPS funds increases complexity and regulatory requirements increase the compliance and oversight burden, which means that a fully featured trading and portfolio tracking tool should help to mitigate risk and improve efficiency. Annual trading volumes for LPF internal portfolios have typically ranged between 1 000 — 2 000 trades (per annum) for internal equity portfolios, and 100 – 200 bond trades (per annum) for internal bond portfolios. Typical maximum trading volume figures on a per day basis are 200 trades per day for equities, and 50 trades per day for bonds. Note that these figures are indicative only and may be subject to change in future. Having adequate internal systems and controls is a requirement of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), particularly in the case of Lothian Pension Fund’s regulated investment company, LPFI Ltd.