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title: Peer Intelligence - Winter 2023
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Refreshing our pension administration service model; Clients' interviews; First VoC data cut; Transparency best practices, and more!

| View in browser Newsletter Edition: Winter 2023 Letter from our CEO Is it possible to maintain – or even increase – the insight in CEM’s benchmarking analyses while making it easier to participate? We think so.   Happy New Year! I hope that you had a chance to unplug and spend quality time with your loved ones.   Hopefully, you recall that last quarter, I shared four areas where CEM will deliver greater insight in 2023 and beyond. In parallel, we are taking measures to make it easier to provide data and digest insights.   Here are five that are either already in place or will be shortly:  Survey Simplification. Particularly in Pension Administration, the migration to digital has accelerated change. Many of our legacy survey questions hold less relevance today. For 2023, we will be culling questions that have limited impact on service scores.  Partnership with Recordkeepers & Custodians. With Plan Sponsor permission, Fidelity started providing option-level data three years ago and now will be enhancing this data set in 2023. We now work with several leading recordkeepers and custodians to pre-populate your IBS and DC templates.     Asset Manager Templates. Three years ago, we started collecting mandate-level data directly from asset managers, using industry and CEM-proprietary templates. Already have a third-party collecting templates on your behalf? Simply send them our way.  Investment Consultants. Do you prefer advice seamlessly built into your benchmarking insights? With your permission, we can release results to your consultant. We are happy to talk them through the numbers to help them provide their best advice.  CEM’s Product Experts. If all else fails, let’s talk. Many of our clients have provided data consecutively for decades. We’ll listen to your approach and suggest practices that we have seen work well with your peers and help as best we can on our end.  I am also delighted to share that CEM was re-appointed to the National LGPS Framework in the U.K., as a service provider to the local government pension schemes. CEM is proud that we have been providing benchmarking services to UK public schemes for over a decade and that this service will continue.   Finally, I want to thank the almost 200 of you we met in person at our recent PABS Conference, Global Leaders forum, or 30th-anniversary celebration. It was lovely to meet many of you in person.      Thank you for reading & best wishes for 2023,  Rashay  Rashay Jethalal, CEO Rashay@cembenchmarking.com Future-proofing member service comparisons In the coming year, we will refresh our Pension Administration service model. We strive to provide you with better insights, re-align our service metrics & weights with how you see the world, and reduce your workload. In this article, Edsart shares more details and the benefits for participants. Read More Bps and Bites Musings and insights from CEM's research desk In Real Estate, large and more direct investors globally tend to outperform the benchmarks, with large Canadian pension funds outperforming to an even greater degree. It begs the question: why? Read More Let's Be Transparent Client transparency best practices curated by Edsart In 2022, we released the results of the second annual Global Pension Transparency Benchmark, a collaboration with Top1000funds.com. In this column, Edsart shares a performance reporting best practice from the Government Pension Fund of Norway, an institution managed by Norges Bank. Read More "Key Strokes" Janjaap's tips for getting the most out of your dashboard A key benefit of the CEM Dashboard is that it provides high-level insights in one single screen. But what if you want to dig deeper? In this "Key Strokes" video, Janjaap shows the power of drill-downs to access detailed data, tables, and much more. Voice of the Customer Member experiences captured by Hannah We are in the early stages of collecting our first cut of VoC data insights. If you survey your members, read on for Hannah's findings regarding survey responses and rating scales. Read More Note of PINterest Peer sharing in pension administration Our online Peer Intelligence Network (PIN) is a trove of peer wisdom and best practices. In this edition meet top contributors to the PIN: Shannon Warner from Ohio Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS) and Valerie Stone from Washington State Department of Retirement Systems (Washington State DRS). Shannon and Valerie share their experiences and valuable tips from years of contributing to the PIN. Read More Coffee Chat Get to know a CEMer Manisha Wanniarachchige is one of the software engineers on our team. Did you know she is also a YouTube creator and owns a channel with 7,000+ followers? Read More CEM in the News Handpicked news selections from around the world CEM at the Georgetown CRI Conference Chris Flynn shared insights on the use alternatives in U.S. D.C. Plans in Washington, D.C. Read More CEM Pension Administration Conference After three years, we celebrated our first in-person PABS conference in Phoenix, Arizona Read More CEM reappointed by the LGPS Framework  We are pleased to continue working with UK LGPS pools to monitor costs and improve performance Read More Invite your colleagues to subscribe to Peer Intelligence. CEM Benchmarking, 372 Bay Street # 1000, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Manage preferences |
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