Pension fund monthly returns data / database

THIS IS A CONTRACT AWARD NOTICE

THE FRC The purpose of the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) is to serve the public interest by setting high standards of corporate governance, reporting and audit and by holding to account those responsible for delivering them.

BACKGROUND • Since 6 April 2003 money purchase pension arrangements have been required to provide members with Statutory Money Purchase Illustrations ("SMPIs"). These illustrations are governed by the Occupational and Personal Pension Schemes (Disclosure of Information) Regulations 2013 as amended. Legislation requires that statutory illustrations are produced in accordance with guidance prepared by a prescribed body approved by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions ("DWP") and by the Department for Social Development in Northern Ireland. • The FRC has been the prescribed body since 6 April 2007 and fulfils its obligations through the publication of Actuarial Standard Technical Memorandum 1: Statutory Money Purchase Illustrations ("AS TM1"). AS TM1 specifies the assumptions and methods to be used in the calculation of statutory illustrations of money purchase pensions, also known as defined contribution ("DC") pensions. • In particular, AS TM1 sets out the prescribed approach for the accumulation rates which providers must use to determine how much the member's current pension pot will grow between now and their retirement. The FRC reviews AS TM1 regularly and will require market data to support this analysis.

OUR REQUIREMENT WAS

• The FRC required, on an ongoing basis, a source of data for relevant fund returns. Our requirement is ongoing subscription with a well-established data provider which can provide the data we required for this work, namely: o Monthly return data for UK pension funds - i.e. the % change between the price (on a consistent basis) between the first day (or most recent available pricing date before this) and last day of the month (or most recent available pricing date before this). o At least 500 (ideally more) distinct currently active funds, with a reasonable representation of different asset allocations that exist in the market o Dating back to at least January 1990. o Data should be available as soon as possible after reporting date, ideally within 4 weeks. For example, the monthly return for 31 January 2023 should be available for download by 28 February 2023. o Data should be available for download anytime for use in Excel (with reasonable maintenance blackout period). If a reduced tariff for reduced frequency of access to data is offered, we would be interested to know. o Data should be accessible virtually. o Facility to query data (with defined SLA) where anomalies or data gaps are identified o Unique identifiers per fund must be included o Ideally including identifiers for the asset types included in the fund.

Additional information: THIS IS A CONTRACT AWARD NOTICE THIS TENDER HAS BEEN COMPLETED .

The FRC reserves the right to extend the contract.