FTN gives notice for procurements of Global and European index funds

FTN is today giving notice for two parallel procurements of index funds. The first procurement is for index funds with a primary investment focus on equities in large and medium-sized European companies. The second procurement is for index funds with a primary investment focus on equities in large and medium-sized global companies. FTN intends to procure up to four funds in the European index fund category and up to six funds in the Global index fund category.

The existing category of European index funds currently consists of seven funds with a total of 182,000 savers. The pension savers have a total capital of approximately SEK 15 billion invested in these funds.*

The existing category of global index funds on the premium pension fund platform currently consists of eleven funds with a total of 287,000 savers. The pension savers have a total capital of approximately SEK 43 billion invested in these funds.*

“Create the conditions for higher pensions”
In connection with the notice of the procurements, the fund agreements for the affiliated funds affected by the procurements will be terminated. However, the funds will continue to be available on the fund platform until the procurements are completed and the procured funds that have been awarded fund agreements replace the affiliated funds.

In total, the two procurements affect 469,000 pension savers with total savings of approximately SEK 58 billion*.
"In our efforts to raise the quality of the premium pension system, it is a major and important step to now announce two new procurements. Both procurements are for index funds, where global index funds in particular form the basis of long-term pension savings for many people. We expect the procurements to lead to lower fees and higher quality, which will create the conditions for higher pensions for hundreds of thousands of savers", says Erik Fransson, Executive Director of the office of FTN.

Both procurement specifications include limits for tracking error, a ratio for how much a fund is allowed to deviate from index. After dialogue with the market, FTN has set the tracking error limit at a maximum of 2 percent for the fund against the benchmark index and a maximum of 4 percent for the benchmark index against the procurement's category index.

Important that tenders are complete
The notice of these procurements, which takes place today on February 29th 2024, means that fund managers can submit tenders, which must be received by FTN no later than April 18th 2024 via the procurement platform e-Avrop. Participation requires the payment of a tender fee, which must be paid at the latest when a tender for a procurement is submitted. Fund managers wishing to participate in both tenders will have to submit separate tenders.

In order for tender to be evaluated by FTN, the fund and the fund manager must fulfil the requirements in the procurement as well as general requirements, and the tender submitted must be complete and accurate. To ensure equal treatment of all potential tenderers, no information related to the ongoing procurements will be shared directly with individual tenderers. Fund managers have the opportunity to ask questions about the procurements via e-avrop until April 8th 2024.

Further information can be found in the procurement documentation.

Tenders:

• Must be submitted via www.e-avrop.com External link.. A registration in e-Avrop is required to be able to submit a tender in the procurements.
  
• The deadline for submission of a tender is 18-04-2024 23:59 (CET).
• Questions and answers in the procurement process are handled via e-avrop.com.

Please note that documents received by an authority, such as tenders, are public documents and may therefore be disclosed in their entirety if someone requests access to them. However, information protected by confidentiality is not disclosed. It is therefore important that the fund manager clarifies which parts of the material submitted in the tender should be covered by confidentiality and describes in what way the fund manager would suffer harm if the information were disclosed. However, FTN will make an independent confidentiality assessment which in turn may ultimately be reviewed by a court.