Eight U.K. local government pension funds selected Northern Trust as global custodian, a spokesman for one of the funds, Norfolk Pension Fund, Norwich, England, confirmed Friday.
The funds, which are part of the local authority pool ACCESS Pool and have a combined £44.8 billion ($62.2 billion) in assets, expect to save a combined £3.2 million over 10 years during the duration of the contract.
Four of the funds rehired Northern Trust as global custodian. The remaining funds are moving to Northern Trust and away from global custody contracts with BNY Mellon, J.P.Morgan and HSBC, which are all coming to and end.
The other England-based funds participating in addition to Norfolk are:
- Cambridgeshire County Council Pension Fund, Cambridge.
- Essex Pension Fund, Chelmsford.
- Hampshire County Council Pension Fund, Winchester.
- Hertfordshire County Council Pension Fund, Hertford.
- Kent County Council Pension Fund, Maidstone.
- Northamptonshire County Council Pension Fund, Northampton.
- Suffolk County Council Pension Fund, Ipswich.
The funds utilized U.K's national local authority framework for this procurement.
"The timescales for the tender process were cut from months to weeks, terms and conditions had already been agreed, and we were supported by Mercer Sentinels' technical analysis. This meant that we could focus the process on identifying the right partner for the individual Funds," Sangeeta Surana, principal accountant investments at Kent Pension Fund, said in a news release Friday.
The RFP was issued in April.
