Mellon European Fund Services has been appointed to provide fund accounting services to Railpen Investments, the investment arm of the Railways Pension Trustee Company Limited, the sixth largest pension fund in the United Kingdom.
It will be a large and complicated job. Mellon European Fund Services will provide accounting services for the scheme’s 15 pooled investment funds, which belong to over 300,000 members, and more than 20 investment managers are involved in the management of total assets valued at approximately 12 billion.
“We operate a large and sophisticated investment structure for our schemes, so it was particularly important for us to identify a partner who could demonstrate the flexibility to develop a solution that met our specific needs,” explains Malcolm Gray, Finance Director of Railpen Investments. ” Throughout the selection process, Mellon has demonstrated the quality and value adding components of its accounting service offering.”
The funds will be serviced from one of Mellon’s administrative centres in Essex, and will be converted to Mellon’s accounting platform in July 2003. “This is probably the largest investment accounting mandate to have been awarded in the last twelve months, and is a significant endorsement of Mellon’s market-leading capabilities,” says Richard Godfrey, Managing Director of Mellon European Fund Services. “We are delighted to be working with an organisation of Railpen’s excellent standing and look forward to building an enduring partnership with them.”
Railpen Investments provides strategic investment advice, investment performance monitoring, investment accounting and appoints external investment managers and custodians for the Railways Pension Scheme and eight other railway industry pension schemes. They collectively form the sixth-largest pension fund in the UK.
CSTIM, the specialist fund management consultancy headed by John Dallas, assisted Railpen in the selection process for the investment accounting mandate.
Mellon European Fund Services existing UK clients include Legal & General, Marks & Spencer Financial Services, Prudential UK and Nationwide Building Society.