Imbasa Yegolide Awards for Professional Excellence

Transcription

1 Imbasa Yegolide Awards for Professional Excellence PROJECT CHARTER FOR

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS PURPOSE AND RATIONALE OF THE PROJECT CHARTER... 3 LIFESPAN OF THE PROJECT CHARTER... 3 THE RATIONALE BEHIND THE ANNUAL AWARDS... 3 WHO PARTICIPATES IN THE AWARDS?... 4 PARTICIPATION OF THE POA BOARD OF DIRECTORS... 4 COMMUNICATION WITH THE INDUSTRY BEFORE THE NOMINATION PROCESS 5 ACTION REQUIRED BY PRINCIPAL OFFICERS... 5 NOMINATION CATEGORIES... 5 THE NOMINATION PROCESS... 6 FROM FINAL NUMBERS TO FINAL NOMINEES... 7 THE RIGHT TO DEFEND AN AWARD... 7 THE PRINCIPLES THAT APPLY AT THE BOARD MEETING... 7 ACTION REQUIRED BY NOMINEES (SERVICE PROVIDERS)... 8 TABLE SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES... 9 JUDGING PROCESS... 9 APPROACHING THE JUDGES... 9 CRITERIA FOR THE APPOINTMENT OF JUDGES... 9 JUDGING AFTER JUDGING AUDITORS AND WEBMASTER COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA EXPOSURE CONTACT DETAILS

3 Purpose and rationale of the Project Charter The purpose of this Project Charter is to outline the procedure to be followed by the POA in preparation for the annual Imbasa Yegolide Awards. We wish to outline the procedure to be followed in order to: ensure that there is a structure in place to promote the seamless preparation and running of the Awards for all future Awards events to be held by the POA; comply with the principles of good governance so that any attempts to discredit the Awards or the Awards process can be examined against the Project Charter for truth and accuracy; provide our auditors with a tool against which they can measure the preparation and running of the Awards, in order to assist them with their audit. Lifespan of the Project Charter This Project Charter, which is the first of its kind, is based on the preparations and running of the 2009 Imbasa Yegolide Awards. There may be subsequent versions (second, third, fourth, etc.) of this Project Charter as the POA takes learnings from each annual Awards event. It goes without saying that the Procedure Guide is therefore not cast in stone; subsequent versions may differ considerably. The rationale behind the annual Awards The Principal Officers Association initially teamed up with UK-based Global Pensions to host an annual Awards ceremony to reward service providers in the retirement industry and to highlight the important role of Principal Officers. Global Pensions stopped operating towards the end of 2011 and Raquel Picardo- Allison, Editor In Chief, wished the POA success with the future hosting of the Awards going forward. (The POA hosted its first Imbasa Yegolide Awards without the partnership of Global Pensions in 2012.) The competition in South Africa is stepping up and the POA is confident that the event will continue to provide a platform for principal executive officers and service providers to acknowledge service excellence. One of the important goals of the Awards is to enable funds to give effect to PF 130 a directive issued by the Financial Services Board. PF 130 deals with good governance of retirement funds and contains a code of conduct. The code recommends that funds maintain healthy relationships with service providers, and this is an area where the 3

4 Principal Officer of a retirement fund can play a key role of facilitation. (While directives issued by the FSB also known as PF circulars are not legally binding, they do act as guidelines to the industry. Retirement funds rely on PF circulars to help them navigate the trickier issues of pension funds law.) Who participates in the Awards? The POA s member Principal Officers as well as non-member Principal Officers are invited to nominate service providers in 24 categories whom they believe are worthy of an Award. Only practising Principal Officers may submit nominations. The aim of the Awards is to reflect the Principal Officer s experience of the service standards of their fund service providers. The POA is not prescriptive as to how a Principal Officer should make his or her choice. Principal Officers are decision-makers in their own right and it is not obligatory for their choice to be ratified by their board of trustees. As this is an anonymous process, the personal details of Principal Officers cannot and will not be revealed to anyone. The POA membership database is used as the main source to distribute the requests for nominations. The POA also approaches other industry bodies within the retirement space to disseminate information about the Awards. Participation of the POA Board of Directors The POA Board acknowledges that certain board members might be linked to a specific service provider by way of employment, a contractual agreement or a similar arrangement. However, all board members are also Principal Officers. As such, they have the same right to submit nominations for their employers or contract partners (as the case may be) to win an Award. If such an organisation is nominated (employer, contract partner, etc.), the board member concerned shall recuse himself or herself from any discussions held by the Board in connection with the nominations. The attendance register and minutes of any meetings where such discussions are held shall be subject to auditing. 4

5 Communication with the industry before the nomination process The POA will distribute the following letters to players in the industry before the nomination process: letters to service providers advising them that the POA is about to approach Principal Officers in the industry to ask them to nominate service providers for excellent service; letters to members of the POA as well as non-member Principal Officers to advise them to look out for communication to follow in the form of a web-based survey tool which they should use to vote for service providers who have provided their funds with excellent service; and letters to trustees advising them of the above-mentioned communication to be forwarded to their Principal Officers and requesting them to bring this to the attention of their Principal Officers. Deadline: These letters must be sent out by Tuesday, 29 January Action required by Principal Officers Nomination categories Principal Officers will be required to nominate their favourite service provider(s) in the following categories: Categories 1. Global Manager of the Year 2. Cash Manager of the Year 3. Custodian of the Year 4. Equities Manager of the Year 5. Manager of Managers of the Year 6. Employee Benefits Consultant of the Year 7. Hedge Fund Provider of the Year 8. Law Firm of the Year 9. Investment Consultant of the Year 10. Responsible Investment Manager of the Year 11. Responsible Investment Consultant / Service Provider of the Year 12. Training Provider of the Year 5

6 13. Overall Investment Manager of the Year 14. Employee Benefits Administrator of the Year 15. Risk Benefit Underwriter of the Year 16. Transition Manager of the Year 17. Trust and Beneficiary Fund Administrator of the Year 18. Bond Manager of the Year 19. Balanced Fund Manager of the Year 20. Absolute Returns Manager of the Year 21. Actuarial Firm of the Year 22. Tracing Agent of the Year 23. Technology Provider of the Year 24. Industry Personality of the Year (Discretionary) The nomination process We undertake to follow these guidelines for the 2013 Imbasa Yegolide Awards with regard to the nominations: We will create an online survey tool with the help of our web-master, insite Innovative Education Solutions. The survey tool must meet the following requirements: One person should not be able to vote more than once. To ensure this, one of the requirements for voting will be that participants should use their identity numbers to register as a voter. The tool will allow voters to vote either in all 24 categories, or in any number of those categories (i.e. from 1 to 24). The POA will not be able to access the results of the votes made. Only the web-master and auditors will be able to access the results. The POA will be responsible for sending the survey tool out to its databases, which contains the addresses of both members of the POA and non-members. We aim to reach not only Principal Officers who are members of the POA, but also Principal Officers in the industry who are not yet members of the POA. A manual voting process will be implemented for those Principal Officers who have no access to the internet or who, for practical reasons, choose the manual process. Such process will be overseen by the Secretariat of the POA.. 6

7 Once the webmaster and auditors have tallied the votes, they will provide the POA with the final numbers. This means that the POA does not have access to the information which reflects who the actual votes were made by. Deadline: All nominations must have been made by 17h00 on Monday, 11 March The webmaster must provide the POA with the final numbers by Wednesday, 13 March 2013 From final numbers to final nominees the shortlist The right to defend an Award From 2013 for the first time in the history of the Awards, the previous year s winners will automatically be entered as nominees. There will be no need for them to be nominated by Principal Officers to make it to the nomination stage. However, like the other nominees, the previous year s winners will have to complete a submission form. The principles that apply at the board meeting for service providers nominated If the final numbers are such that there are three clear leading nominees per category, the CEO will announce this fact to the POA Board, together with the names of the three leading nominees. The POA Board will consider the appropriateness of the leading nominees. The following principles will apply: Any nominees incorrectly nominated for a specific category are to be removed. Where a person is nominated instead of a company or organization, the nominee will be removed. This principle does not apply to the categories Training Provider of the Year and Industry Personality of the Year. Where, in the opinion of the POA Board, a party s nomination is problematic in that their past conduct makes them unworthy of an Award, and the good name of the POA and the South African retirement fund industry stand to be jeopardized by such nomination, the nominee will be removed. In the case of Industry Personality of the Year, votes made by Principal Officers serve merely as a guideline for the POA Board. The Board ultimately chooses the winner, or declines to choose a winner. If the final numbers are such that there are not three clear leading nominees per category, the POA Board will meet to follow a process of elimination. The four principles mentioned above will apply, as well as the following principles: 7

8 Where there is a significant difference in the number of votes (for example, 100 votes for the nominee in the first place, 60 votes for the nominee in the second place and 5 votes for the nominee in the third place), the nominee with the small number of votes will be removed. (In this scenario it is deemed to be the case that there are not three clear leading nominees because of the disparate numbers.) As far as possible, all nominees will be included if they have an equal number of votes. Such meeting will be minuted and the minutes made available to the auditors. Deadline: The names of the final nominees will be announced by the POA by no later than Monday, 18 March This will include the names of the previous year s winners who will defend their titles. Action required by nominees (service providers) Submission of motivation A secure online assessment tool has been developed to facilitate the adjudication process. It provides for both the nomination process (uploading of submissions) as well as the judging process. Each nominee will be required to provide a 750-word submission to the appointed judges in which they are given the chance to motivate why they believe they should be the winner in the category concerned. The submission takes the form of a response to certain questions. Where a nominee is chosen in more than one category, the nominee must prepare separate submissions for each category. No additional attachments or supporting documents will be allowed. Nominees should bear in mind that the focus of the motivation is service excellence. Nominees are advised to refrain from using marketing jargon. The motivations should be factually correct and information provided should be verifiable where reasonable. False or misleading information will result in a disqualification or a deduction in the final score. Nominees must provide the details of the contact person who will be coordinating the motivation and will be involved in any related processes. 8

9 Nominees will have 25 days from the date on which they are notified that they are on the shortlist to complete their submissions and to upload their submissions onto the secure online assessment tool. Deadlines: (1) The POA will have received the contact details of the key people by Monday, 18 March 2013; (2) Submission goes out to short list on Monday, 25 March 2013, and a second submission goes out to those defending their titles; (3) Submissions must be in by 17h00 on Friday, 3 May Table sponsorship opportunities Nominees will have the opportunity to sponsor a table of 10 seats at the Gala Dinner. They can invite their trustees, Principal Officers and other guests to share the evening with them. Nominees must be present at the Awards event to receive their Award. If they are not present, they will forfeit the Award because Awards are not made in absentia. In such a case, no Award will be made for the category concerned. The POA will sell tables for the event or will outsource the table-selling function. Besides table sponsorships, other sponsorship opportunities will also be available to provide nominees or other service providers with a focused branding opportunity. Deadline: Table sales should commence on 4 April 2013 and must be finalized by no later than 10 May Judging Process Approaching the judges The CEO of the POA will approach local and international individuals to ask them to act as judges in the Awards. The POA Board appoints the judges. There will be a mix of local and international judges. Criteria for the appointment of judges The judges must satisfy the POA Board that they are reputable and that they have the relevant knowledge and experience related to retirement fund matters. To ensure that the judging process is ethical and not compromised, judges will be required to answer the following three questions: 9

10 1. Do you presently receive any income directly or indirectly from any service providers in South Africa or SADC, or do you expect to do so over the next six months? 2. Do you currently advise any retirement fund in South Africa on an ongoing basis, in a capacity other than that of trustee? 3. Do you have any shareholding, direct or indirect, in a service provider in the South African or SADC retirement fund industry? Deadline: Judges appointments must be finalized by 29 April Judging Judging is guided by a set of broad principles which are not in the public domain. The decision of the judges is final and no correspondence will be entered into. A mail will be sent to each of the nominees requesting them to upload their supporting motivations onto a secure online assessment tool. The judges will have their own login and they will be able to view these motivations online. They will score each of the nominees online. A report will be produced by the assessment system which will show the winners in each category after the judges have all voted. A Chief Judge will be appointed by the POA board to oversee the adjudication process. After judging The Judges will provide their winners to the CEO of the POA by Thursday, 23 May The CEO and the Chief Judge will discuss the winners and their suitability. In the case of a tie by the judges, the Chief Judge will have a casting vote. The number of ties that take place, if any, is information which may not form part of the public domain. The winners will be announced at the Gala Dinner on Monday, 10 June 2013.The POA, in its discretion, reserves the right not to make an Award. Deadline: Discussion with the Chief Judge on the winners list to be finalized by Monday, 27 May Auditors and Webmaster KPMG have been appointed as the auditors of the Imbasa Yegolide Awards to ensure that the process of the Awards is transparent and fair. 10

11 insite Innovative Education Solutions is the webmaster and manages the processes around the online assessment tool with regard to nominations and judging. Deadline: Final auditing of winners list by Friday, 31 May Communication and media exposure The POA will announce the nominees and winners in the Business Day and other retirement industry magazines. These announcements will be posted on a dedicated Imbasa Yegolide website especially for this purpose. Winners will have access to an electronic winners logo. However, winners are not allowed to use any of the POA trade marks without written permission and payment of a usage fee. Permission can be obtained from the POA Chief Executive Officer. Sponsorship of the event The POA has not yet announced a sponsor of the event. Contact details POA Christo Snyman Research & Marketing Manager research@poa.org.za Tel no: