MPF OF THE YEAR AWARDS

The “Compliance” category aims to identify best practice MPF Trustees who go beyond the most minimal regulatory requirement and proactively build an effective defense system for internal control that prepares the organization to face unanticipated market events and disruptive trends. The critical criteria in this category include the following. Please explain:

How your firm’s compliance addresses the various business functions:

• Process and rationale of integrating compliance into business functions
• Segregation between Trustee’s and Sponsor’s duties and responsibilities
• New product due diligence, onboarding, monitoring, and development
• Meeting international ESG demand and applying global normative assessment
• Product and other training for intermediaries
• IT and technology framework, including data collection, data privacy, data processing
  the role and responsibility of the CCO
• The transparency between the business owners, process owners, and audit the lines of defense

The “Risk Management” category aims to identify best practice MPF Trustees who have best-in-class risk control infrastructures, practices, and outcomes. Please demonstrate your firm’s foresight, vision, and accomplishments on the following:

The submission criteria include qualities below:

• Effective appointment, termination, and oversight of Service Providers for services delegated
• Explicit policies covering product responsibilities, customer data privacy, customer satisfaction measurement
• Integration of risk management into key functions, from the front to the back offices, for greater competitiveness and operational safety and efficiency
• Conflict management between outsourced vendors and the Trustee within the same financial group
• Employing digital innovation while mitigating concerns derived from cyber-attacks
• Protection of data privacy and the vulnerabilities that emerged from automation
• Digitization and global expansion of your firm’s digital ecosystems
• Governance protocol for decision-making processes

The “Corporate Governance” category aims to identify best practice MPF Trustees with a robust governance framework, infrastructure, and an operating model.  The process examines the critical functions of the board’s role, responsibility and compensation, risk culture, people, and talents, processes, and technologies while maintaining a diverse board of directors. 

The submission includes the qualities below:

• The risk management and culture of your organization
• Senior executives’ code of ethics, audit committee independence, Chairman, CEO Board separation, board diversity policy, etc…
• The Board Diversity Policy and your firm’s commitment to a diverse board
• Relevant committees and their policies and practices
• Your firm’s principles for managing both internal and external stakeholders’ interests
• Your CRO and CCO’s reporting protocol

This award  highlights the responsibilities that MPF trustees, as asset owners, have in helping to shape the world we live in.”  This award is given to the Trustees that embrace Responsible Investing and practice Active Ownership and integrate ESG into their ownership policies and practices while driving positive real-world goals.

Apart from illustrating their collaborative engagement initiatives with the underlying investment managers, they prioritize outcomes at the society/economy-wide scales, such as addressing climate change and corruption, rather than purely focusing on pure risks and returns of the holdings in the portfolio.

Judges will be looking for qualities in:

• the foundation of the practical stewardship principles and sustainability issues identification
• ongoing development and implementation of the responsible investment strategies and policies
• monitoring and assessment techniques of the investment managers and  investee companies
• the collaboration goals and engagement principles with the investment managers
• how voting rights are exercised by the investment managers
• how ESG is promoted as long-term value creation
• level of transparency, disclosure, and reporting

Multiple funds of the underlying investment managers will be drawn randomly from BlueOnion* to demonstrate the walking the talks of the fund houses’ ESG, GC, and Temperature performances against their peers.

*BlueOnion is Benchmark’s disruptive fund research platform hosting over 180,000 funds with sustainability data, including ESG, Global Compact (GC), and Temperature Score over 65,000 funds in 14 countries.

www.blueonion.today

This Award recognizes an in-house team of an MPF Trustee that has demonstrated achievements in the following Service Levels and achievements:

The submission criteria include qualities below:

• Online Support: Whether the provider offers a streamlined onboarding process for new employee enrollment, whether forms are easily accessible, switching of funds is enabled, and the submission process is well organized through website and app access.
• Service Pledges: Please describe your service pledge to the employer, describing your service level, charges, administrative undertakings, updates on regulatory changes, etc.  Notes will be compared with the MPFA’s Trustee Service Comparative Platform.
• Communication and Reporting: Whether the portal/statement provides an interactive portfolio overview, performance, and risk figures accompanied by the company’s commentaries and messages, and keeping the employers abreast of new legislation and regulations.
• Measuring Success: What are the key indicators used to measure client satisfaction, what mechanisms are used for collecting and measuring end customers’ feedback, what has been the attrition rate, and whether this effort demonstrates impressive growth for assets under administration

This Award recognizes an in-house team of an MPF Trustee that has demonstrated achievements in the following Service Levels and achievements:

The submission criteria include qualities below:

• Online Support: Whether the provider offers a streamlined onboarding process for new employee enrollment, whether forms are easily accessible, switching of funds is enabled, and the submission process is well organized through website and app access.
• Putting the Members First: Whether the process puts its end customers’ needs first and whether it has a structured approval process to ensure end customers’ satisfaction through tracking and improvements of end-customer satisfaction rates, customer retention rates, response time, and ability to provide accurate, precise and usable information.
• Empowerment of Members: Whether there are tools to enable customers to do things themselves and become more engaged in the process – tracking their existing portfolio holdings, researching new investment opportunities, and comparing with other investments outside of the company’s.
• Communication and Reporting: The portal/statement provides an interactive portfolio overview, performance, and risk figures accompanied by the company’s commentaries and messages.
• Measuring Success: What are the key indicators used to measure client satisfaction, and what are the mechanisms for collecting and measuring end customers’ feedback
• ECA Effort: Whether the team and process are robust enough to provide timely service to clients who actively utilize the benefits of ECA to manage their retirement account, and whether there is a mechanism to detect unusual and unethical behavior.
• DIS Implementation: What are the proactive initiatives taken to educate the members on the implementation of DIS and whether a fair approach has been taken to inform the members of its pros and cons, and what factors they should consider when contemplating such strategies.

We are looking for a company that adopts best practices in recruiting, managing, and retaining the talent pool to meet the Social responsibilities in the realm of ESG. Companies that care deeply about their employees’ health, safety, and wellness and have cultivated a healthy workplace should consider entering this category.

Judges will be looking for qualities in:

• Retention: Ability to attract, retain, and develop human capital, as well as the exposure to risks of increased costs associated with high employee turnover or reduced productivity resulting from poor morale.
• Engagement: Formal employee engagement channels, broad-based professional development, training opportunities, and implementing flexible work hours.
• Benefits: Comprehensive compensation and benefits packages provide annual profit-sharing bonuses, regularly giving employees a substantial and concrete stake in the company’s success. It also offers incentives in short-term activities and benefits aligned to customers’ long-term interests and gifts.
• Culture: The company empowers professional and personal growth by demonstrating strong leadership, communication, culture, and corporate social responsibility.
• Training and Development: Explicit policies and execution that covers internal promotion, Supplier ESG Training, Career Development Policy, and Average # of training hours
• Diversity and Inclusion: Best practice policies to broaden the pool of talent to include all genders, races, and ages.

For this category, we are looking at the Sponsor’s responsibilities over Product quality and safety including the investment due diligence with a comprehensive fund manager selection process, risk management system, and methodologies for screening investment products.  Considerations include the reviews of managers’ investment process, performance and risks, portfolio management, stewardship, and corporate quality.

The submission includes the following criteria:

• Screening Process: A comprehensive risk management system and methodologies used for investment screening. Senior management participation from business units, legal, compliance, risk management, and operations on new product offerings, vetting, and ongoing monitoring.
• Product Safety and Quality: The Sponsor has undergone a stringent process to find the best underlying managers that are the least costly, complex, or risky to achieve its objectives.
• Monitoring: Whether there is a rigorous governance process to monitor the managers’ deterioration in quantitative and qualitative management along their investment process, performance and risks, portfolio management, stewardship, and corporate quality.
• Investment/Divestment Process: A clear guideline and action is taken to divest away from an underlying manager whether it is a breach of mandate, underperformance on risk or return thresholds, manager’s failure to comply with necessary engagement and disclosure requirement
• ESG Integration: Whether there is a process and guideline to examine investment manager’s incorporation of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors into investment decisions and its commitment to transparency and constructive engagement with investors.

The ESG Integration Award recognizes investment management companies that demonstrate commitments to integrate ESG into their investment decision-making throughout the investment process for the entire suites of their products, investment activities and reinforces ESG’s role in Long-Term Value Creation.

Judges will be looking for qualities in:

• The systematic approach: innovative approaches to applying environmental, social, and governance (ESG) analysis to the funds being managed across the board, despite the sectors, countries, and asset classes
• The team buy-in and implementation: how multiple teams come to a consensus for the performance across the board
• Disclosure of policies and procedures for integrating ESG information and metrics into the investment process communicated to investee companies
• Execution of resources, constraints, and timeline management
• The key learnings from this approach measure outcomes

Multiple funds of the underlying managers will be drawn randomly from BlueOnion* to demonstrate the walking the talks of the fund houses’ ESG, GC, and Temperature performances against their peers.

*BlueOnion is Benchmark’s disruptive fund research platform hosting over 180,000 funds with sustainability data, including ESG, Global Compact (GC), and Temperature Score over 65,000 funds in 14 countries.

www.blueonion.today

The impact initiatives measure the MPF’s sponsor selection of underlying managers’ ability or index to create positive social or/and environmental value. They also have material exposure to businesses that address social or/and environmental challenges through their products and services. It should also prove that their investments are aligned with one or more UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

Key metrics include:

• your competitive proposition in the impact investment space
• the substantial impact, both negative and positive, and/or the progress towards achieving those goals
• the scale of the investments vs. the impact terms created
• how the impact contributes to society/economy-wide solutions
• the uniqueness of the project that was set out to solve issues not addressed before the
• buy-ins of all stakeholders with clearly defined KPIs

This award aims to identify a company’s best strategy for improving investor knowledge and relations. Judges will be looking for providers with best-in-class characteristics in the following areas. Please describe your efforts and accomplishments in:

Key metrics include:

• Key Initiatives: What are the programs/initiatives used to educate and inform the public, and do they demonstrate ongoing leadership in the MPF industry, integrating best performing managers and analyst teams, advocating employee freedom of choice, etc.
• Impartiality: Whether the information offered is objective and balanced, and whether it displays a fair amount of discussion on potential risks and is not designed to push and promote the company’s products merely?
• Sales Support: Whether there is a client support infrastructure to help advisors receive updates on educational materials that enhance ethical selling and advice
• Education: The company strives to ensure that consumers acquire a general understanding of core financial concepts, the risks and returns associated with different types of financial assets, and some understanding of their risk tolerance.
• Commitment: The organization demonstrates a commitment to consumers as lifelong learners, with programs that consider the increased complexity of markets and financial products and undergo a regular assessment of program effectiveness.

The Intermediary Awards recognize MPF intermediaries who excel in product knowledge, technological capabilities, networking, and marketing skills. If your firm is versatile, responsive, and meets impeccable regulatory requirements, while upholding ethics and integrity at the highest standards, you should consider entering.

Key metrics include:

• Major customer segments you work with and how you identify customers’ needs.
• How you conduct servicing touch-points in acquiring new customers, managing complaints, handle ongoing servicing, and implementing policies to meet regulatory compliance.
• Approach to people management including staff recruitment, formal qualifications, ongoing learning and development, retention, and promotions.
• Policies on staff engagement, staff turnover and policies in undertaking professional development.
• The company’s contribution to the MPF industry, your customers and philanthropic support to the community.

We ask contesting Sponsors to demonstrate their strength of service and support to the MPF Intermediaries, both internal and external, based on the following key indicators:

Key metrics include:

• Satisfaction – the alignment between agent/client experience and the ongoing monitoring of satisfaction level. How do you know your customers are happy or unhappy with the Intermediary, and what’s the next step?
• Engagement – your strategies, roadmaps, and indicators for ‘high-touch customer engagement with your intermediaries’ service mapping.
• Process – your level of service, including your people, cross-functional communication, and a measurement component to increase intermediary loyalty.
• Technology – how is technology being used to enhance client insights to assist your Intermediaries, such as sharing the usage of big data, AI, or data warehousing to optimize the client experience and journey?
• Business Results – your process and strategies have given you proven results such as better financial returns, member retention, etc.
• Advocacy – how are your strategies creating a more positive brand attitude that shows in your NPS or other metrics.

This is about a specific campaign launched during the past 12 months between July 2020 and June 2021. We are looking for the most memorable campaign with powerful, meaningful, and inspirational messages that are not commoditized or focused on pricing. The campaign must also deliver on what it promises and should be ethical, relevant, and inclusive. Judging will be along with the merits of the following:

Key metrics include:

• What is the story behind the campaign?
• Whether it is a product campaign, a re-branding exercise, or a campaign for a specific objective?
• What is the significant impact of the story, and did you accomplish that mission?

References will also be made from the Benchmark annual MPF survey with findings through social listening and surveys.

Social media connects people and companies to manage relationships and communicate effectively with their distribution partners and customers. The “Social Media Engagement" category recognizes companies that embrace social media as part of their producer relationship management strategies. They have built excellent social media tools and provide opportunities for people to collaborate and share information.

Key metrics include:

• Engagement Rates include impressions, shared and forwarded posts, comments, video viewership, etc.
• Content Management to reflect the value brought to the members
• Data management to review the utilization of data collected for behavioral analysis and enhancement of customer experience
• Social media platform diversity, sentiment, demographic coverage, and threads, etc.

1.  Asia Equity
2. Asia Pacific Equity
3. China Equity
4. Europe Equity
5. Global Equity
6. Greater China Equity
7. Hong Kong Equity
8. Japan Equity
9. United States Equity
10. Sector Equity

1. Asia Fixed Income
2. Asia Pacific Fixed Income
3. Global Fixed Income
4. Hong Kong Dollar Fixed Income
5. RMB Fixed Income

1. Aggressive Mixed Assets (81% to 100% Equity)
2. Growth Mixed Assets (61% to 80% Equity)
3. Balanced Mixed Assets (41% to 60% Equity)
4. Conservative Mixed Assets ( 21% to 40% Equity)
5. Uncategorized Mixed Assets
6. Default Investment Strategy – Core Accumulation
7. Default Investment Strategy – Age 65 Plus

The ESG Integration Award recognizes investment management companies that demonstrate commitments to integrate ESG into their investment decision-making throughout the investment process for the entire suites of their products, investment activities and reinforces ESG’s role in Long-Term Value Creation.

Judges will be looking for qualities in:

• the systematic approach: innovative approaches to applying environmental, social, and governance (ESG) analysis to the funds being managed across the board, despite the sectors, countries, and asset classes
• the team buy-in and implementation: how multiple teams come to a consensus for the performance across the board
• disclosure: disclosed policies and procedures for integrating ESGinformation and metrics into the investment process communicated to investee companies
• execution: resources, constraints, and timeline management
• outcomes: How are results measured the key learnings from this approach

Multiple funds of the candidates will be drawn randomly from BlueOnion* to demonstrate the walking the talks of the fund houses’ ESG, GC, and Temperature performances against their peers.

*BlueOnion is Benchmark’s disruptive fund research platform hosting over 290,000 funds with sustainability data, including ESG, Global Compact (GC), and Temperature Score in 67 countries.

www.blueonion.today

This award recognizes fund houses putting the welfare of the beneficiaries at the forefront. This award is given to the fund houses that embrace Responsible Investing and practice Active Ownership and integrate ESG into their ownership policies and practices while driving positive real-world goals. Apart from illustrating their collaborative engagement initiatives with the investees, they prioritize outcomes at the society/economy-wide scales, such as addressing climate change and corruption, rather than purely focusing on pure risks and returns of the holdings in the portfolio.

Judges will be looking for qualities in:

• the foundation of the practical stewardship principles
• ongoing development and implementation of the stewardship policies
• monitoring and assessment techniques of investee companies
• the collaboration goals and engagement principles with investee companies and investors
• how voting rights are exercised
• how ESG is promoted as long-term value creation
• level of transparency, disclosure, and reporting

Multiple funds of the candidates will be drawn randomly from BlueOnion* to demonstrate the walking the talks of the fund houses’ ESG, GC, and Temperature performances against their peers.

*BlueOnion is Benchmark’s disruptive fund research platform hosting over 290,000 funds with sustainability data, including ESG, Global Compact (GC), and Temperature Score in 67 countries.

www.blueonion.today