Comprising chiefly investment consultants, academics and former pension fund executives from across Europe, the IPE European Pension Fund Awards judges are specially chosen according to their region and/or area of expertise. Up to 100 judges can be involved in the IPE European Pension Fund Awards.

 

Judging involves a two-stage review process for all the categories except the country/regional awards and is completely transparent. The judges make use of IPE's online entry system to review and score the entries. Each judging panel features at least four judges. The recipients of the Outstanding Industry Contribution and Pension Fund Leader/Team of the Year are based on Editor's Choice.

 

The first phase of the judging process invites members of each judging panel to read and score the entries according to a 20-point score matrix that ranks each against its peers, nationally, regionally and globally. We calculate an average of the judges’ scores to produce the result in each category. This gives us the country and regional Awards winners.

 

The second phase involves the Chair of judges, Georg Inderst, working closely with IPE to review each result. For close results within a 0.5 differential, we revert to the rankings by the judges' scores for those candidates in the running. We then match the rankings to the scores to declare the result. In extreme cases, we will invite the judges on a given panel to join a debate whereby we share the result sheet. the judges may then revise their score and/or comments. IPE is happy to call joint winners if the result suggests that that is the fair outcome.

 

For the highly commended, we use a differential of 1.5 with a cap of three for all categories, except the European Pension Fund of the Year, which is capped at four. 

 

It is inevitable in a business such as ours that conflicts of interest can occur during judging. We are confident that our judges act with honesty and integrity to ensure any conflicts of interest do not influence their views. Were a serious conflict to emerge, however, a judge may excuse him or herself from judging a particular entry. In this instance, we add an average of the other judges' scores as the conflicted judge's score. In extreme cases, we may recuse a judge. 

 

The judges’ views are final. IPE does not permit or accept any correspondence or contact between the judges and entrants and/or sponsors.