Public pension fund fiduciaries now have an ethics checklist for dealing with service providers, courtesy of the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems.
The NCPERS Code of Conduct for Public Pension Service Providers, which service providers will be asked to follow, covers 10 principles, including transparency, communication and professional behavior.
NCPERS officials adopted the guidelines earlier this month to address the growing complexity of compensation and other service arrangements for legal, financial, accounting, investment and custody services, and the need to discourage conflicts of interests.
“NCPERS created this code of conduct to help fiduciaries and managers articulate strong, consistent ethical expectations for service providers across the board,” said Hank Kim, Washington-based executive director and counsel of NCPERS, in a news release. NCPERS represents 500 public pension funds in the U.S. and Canada with $3 trillion in combined assets.
The CFA Institute provided input to NCPERS during development of the code of conduct.
