Investment Management System ("IMS")

The Authority has awarded an investment management system (“IMS”) contract ("Contract") to BlackRock, relying on the exemption in Regulation 32(2)(b)(ii) of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 to use the negotiated procedure without prior publication, on the basis that competition is absent for technical reasons. The IMS will allow the Authority to manage the full investment administration cycle of its debt and equity portfolio (“Portfolio”). The Contract covers implementation, migration support, professional services, licensing, and maintenance. The Authority considered that the Contract can be supplied only by BlackRock through its eFront Invest solution, as BlackRock is uniquely able to provide certain mandatory requirements of the Authority's specification. The Authority reached that conclusion after the following due diligence process: •Engagement of an external consultancy with expertise in this area to prepare a market analysis of options available against the Authority’s service requirements and technical specification •An “RFI” was undertaken with a shortlist of suppliers identified by the external consultancy (“Suppliers”) to understand the technical capability and compatibility of the systems with the Authority’s mandatory requirements and the unique breadth of its Portfolio both in its current and future state •An options report was prepared by the external consultancy which identified eFront Invest as the only solution able to meet the Authority’s mandatory requirements, specifically in relation to fee and waterfall modelling, API connectivity to ensure effective data ingestion and system integration and the level of coverage required to support the Portfolio •The Authority’s business architect completed a comparative analysis of the Suppliers’ sample offerings. This analysis concluded that eFront Invest offers a solution that can support the Portfolio, and that it has inbuilt functionality to support fee and waterfall modelling, flagging that these are mandatory requirements This due diligence established that alternative suppliers could not meet the Authority’s mandatory requirements. Specifically, BlackRock is uniquely able to provide fee and waterfall modelling, API connectivity to ensure effective data ingestion and system integration, and the level of coverage required to support the Portfolio. Moreover, the only available alternatives to eFront Invest would have incurred unacceptable operational and accuracy risks including: •incurring operational and data accuracy risks due to managing multiple software solutions and using manual data entry input •A disaggregated solution increasing the risk of error •Inability to deliver on reporting and wider obligations to UK Government •The incompatibility of the alternative solutions to the Authority’s underlying infrastructure could have impacted the traceability and transparency levels required to meet audit and reporting requirements which could also have incurred reputational risk •The lack of a full-service solution across all current and future requirements would have created the need to maintain and potentially increase manual steps and End User Computing Solutions outside operational risk tolerance The Authority is confident that for the outlined reasons no reasonable alternative or substitute exists to eFront Invest. The Authority is also confident that its specification is reasonable and was not been artificially narrowed or constructed in such a way that only eFront Invest would be able to meet its requirements. Additional information: A VEAT notice 2023/S 000-008087 was previously published in relation to this contract