Fund custody and order routing service

Lyhyt kuvaus

Valtion Eläkerahasto (the State Pension Fund of Finland, VER) is acquiring services for fund order routing, fund custody, fund data and analytics and possible additional services related to the service that could be acquired at a later stage, as defined in this call for tenders (the Call for Tenders) and its attachments (each an Attachment), especially in Attachment 1 (Service description).

The procured service will exceed EU public procurement thresholds.

Hankinnan kuvaus

Valtion Eläkerahasto (the State Pension Fund of Finland, VER) is acquiring services for fund order routing, fund custody, fund data and analytics and possible additional services related to the service that could be acquired at a later stage, as defined in this call for tenders (the Call for Tenders) and its attachments (each an Attachment), especially in Attachment 1 (Service Description).

The procured service will exceed EU public procurement thresholds.

Menettelyn tärkeimmät piirteet

GENERAL
The Finnish Act on Public Procurement and Consession Contracts (1397/2016, the Act) shall be applied to this procurement. The estimated value of the services to be acquired for the Contract Period will exceed the EU threshold pursuant to Section 26 of the Act. This procurement shall be completed with an open procedure pursuant to the Act.

The procurement has not been divided into lots, as the contracting authority considers that the Service included in the procurement constitutes a single whole, the division of which into separate lots would be inappropriate for technical and economic reasons.

Please further see Attachment 8 (Additional information to the Call for Tenders).

SUBMITTING THE TENDER AS A GROUP OF ECONOMIC OPERATORS AND SUBCONTRACTING
A tender may be submitted by a group of economic operators (a consortium or group). If awarded the agreement, all group members must sign the Agreement and undertake joint and several liability to fulfill the obligations and responsibilities under the Agreement. The members of the group may not be changed during the procurement procedure or the contract period.

The group and the supplier with subcontractors are required to have the necessary technical, economic, financial and other capacities to provide the goods and services in accordance with the Agreement for its entire duration. During the tender process and during the contract period, the tenderer may be requested to provide proof on commitments and contracts they have made with the declared subcontractors which may affect the tenderer’s capacity to meet the obligations of the Agreement. The group may be requested to provide corresponding proof on how the relationships between the members of the group have been arranged.

USING RESOURCES OF OTHER ENTITIES
A tenderer or a group of economic operators may rely on the resources of other entities to fulfill the requirements of the Call for Tenders and the Agreement regardless of the legal nature of their relationship. However, the resources of other entities must be de facto at the disposal of the tenderer or the group of economic operators during the procurement process and the contract period.

Such resources may include, for example:
Professional experience – Relying on the expertise of another economic entity, such as a company within the same corporate group, provided that the entity is named in the tender as a subcontractor and actively participates in delivering the Service.
Personnel – Using employees from another company to meet professional qualification requirements, provided that these individuals actively contribute to the delivery of the Service.
Economic and financial standing – Leveraging the financial capacity of another entity.
Technical capabilities – Utilizing another entity’s technical resources, provided they are genuinely used to meet the procurement requirements.

In these instances, the entity being relied on must be appropriately indicated in the tender.

PROCESSING OF TENDERS
Tenders submitted will be binding and they shall be submitted in English. Answers to any questions presented during the process are available through Hilma-portal (www.hankintailmoitukset.fi/en/, requires registration).

The procurement shall progress as follows:
1. Opening of the tenders. Opening of the tenders is not a public event. The procurement entity may open the tenders also after the due time for the tenders, at any moment of time deemed best at its sole discretion.
2. Ensuring the suitability of the tenderer.
3. Ensuring the compliance of the tenders with the Call for Tenders.
4. Comparison of the tenders, the basis of which is described in Attachment 6.
5. Procurement decision and notification of the decision.
6. Entering into the Agreement.

The procurement entity preserves the right not to select any of the tenders it has received and to cancel the procurement procedure based on a justified reason, e.g. where circumstances have changed or if it has become impossible or purposeless for the planned procurement to be executed as described in this document. Furthermore, the contracting authority may decide to cancel the procurement if all the tenders are excessively expensive.

SUITABILITY OF TENDERS
Before the tenders are processed, it shall be assessed whether the tenderers meet the technical, professional and economic and financial requirements presented in the suitability requirements. Tenderers who do not satisfy the technical, financial or other criteria shall be excluded from the procurement.

A tenderer to whom the exclusion grounds as referred to in the Act and/or the ESPD form are applicable will be excluded from the procurement process.

The contracting authority will verify the information provided in the ESPD through official registers, if necessary, and request the winner of the tendering process to provide documents demonstrating compliance with the suitability requirements and that no exclusion grounds are applicable to the winner of the tendering process, including but not limited to criminal record extracts.

COMPLIANCE WITH THE CALL FOR TENDERS
The services offered must fully comply with the requirements outlined in the Call for Tenders and its Attachments. All requested information and required annexes must be submitted as part of the tender.

Tenders that do not meet the requirements of the Call for Tenders or fail to adhere to the conditions of the tendering procedure will be disqualified from the competition.

COMPARISON OF TENDERS
The comparison of the tenders, which comply with the requirements outlined in the Call for Tenders and its Attachments, shall be made according to chapter “Grounds for decision” of the Call for Tenders and Attachment 6.

Luettelo ja lyhyt kuvaus säännöistä ja kriteereistä

The tenderer has the economic capacity to provide the service in the scale and quality required, i.e. the financial position, solvency and creditworthiness of the tenderer (and the group to which it belongs) shall be on adequate level reflecting such economic capacity of the tenderer, and relevant credit rating of the tenderer or the group to which it belongs to is at the time of submitting the tender at least Moody’s rating A3 or S&P rating A-, or Fitch's A-, or considered similar to these based on the information provided to VER by the tenderer.

Luettelo ja lyhyt kuvaus säännöistä ja kriteereistä

The tenderer has previous experience in delivering similar global services as described in this Call for Tenders to at least three (3) institutional investors, such as, but not limited to, pension funds or sovereign wealth funds, during years 2024-2026. Each reference shall include provided services for at least a duration of one (1) year and may still be continuing. The tenderer shall complement and upload as part of its tender a list in the form set out in Attachment 4 (and such references shall substantially cover the Service described in Attachment 1).

Luettelo ja lyhyt kuvaus säännöistä ja kriteereistä

The tenderer has a certificate drawn up by independent external bodies attesting that the tenderer complies with the required quality assurance standards in data and information security, such as ISO/IEC 27001 (information security management) or equivalent at the discretion of VER.

Lisätietoja

Regarding TED BT-14: Please send your possible request to receive Attachment 2 of the Call for Tenders (Holdings of VER) by email to VER-kilpailutus@ver.fi.

CONFIDENTIALITY
If the tender includes trade or professional secrets, any such information must be identified and marked as such by the tenderer in each of their tender documentation and the tenderer shall additionally list the parts of the tender documentation in detail which include such information separately in Annex 8.

VER shall assess the confidentiality of the tender documents.

The tenderers acknowledge that VER shall comply with the Act on the Openness of Government Activities, in addition to the Act on the State Pension Fund and any other regulation applicable to it.

Tarkat tiedot uudelleentarkastelumenettelyjen määräajasta (määräajoista)

An application for review (appeal) to the Finnish Market Court must be lodged within 14 days of the tenderer having received notification of the procurement decision and its grounds, in accordance with Section 146 of the Act on Public Procurement and Concession Contracts (1397/2016). The standstill period is 14 days from electronic notification of the procurement decision, pursuant to Section 129 of the same Act. A request for rectification (hankintaoikaisu) must be submitted to the contracting authority within 14 days of receipt of the procurement decision, in accordance with Section 133 of the Act.