Part 1
Public pension funds and endowments operate on long-term horizons, but the pressures shaping data and technology decisions are moving faster than ever. Private markets allocations are growing. Governance and audit expectations are rising. Internal teams are being asked to do more without proportional increases in headcount or budget. And at some point, that pressure tends to surface in a formal process: an RFI, an RFP, a budget cycle, a board mandate to modernize.
The funds best positioned for success are those that start planning early. Before launching a formal review, they have already assessed the strengths and gaps in their data foundation and established a clear vision for what comes next.
The real work happens before the formal process
Procurement at a public pension fund is deliberate by design. Layered approvals, long budgeting cycles, and a mandate to minimize risk all exist for good reason. The challenge is that once a formal review process begins, attention often shifts to immediate priorities and stakeholder requirements. As a result, the scope can reflect today’s concerns rather than the broader capabilities and data foundations needed to support the fund’s long-term strategy.
Legacy databases and siloed data stores remain common across the pension and endowment landscape. Reconciliation is often manual. Many pension funds rely on reporting processes that span custodians, external managers, and internal platforms. If a formal review is anchored to that model, it can result in solutions that address today’s structure rather than enabling tomorrow’s operating needs.
Leading funds often get ahead of the process by addressing the more difficult challenges early: how to support increasing private markets complexity, strengthen governance and transparency, and establish a data foundation that enables future growth rather than extending legacy infrastructure.
Questions worth asking, before you go to market
Before engaging the market, pension funds should take a step back and assess their priorities. Whether the catalyst is a public RFI, internal planning cycle, or a mandate to modernize, the following questions can help clarify goals and guide decision-making
Are you scoping to the outcome you need, or the shape of the system you already have? Replacing a legacy database with another database that behaves the same way tends to solve very little.
Does your scope account for private markets? Private markets data, including capital calls, valuations, and performance information, introduces a level of complexity that traditional public market infrastructure was not designed to support.
These asset classes rarely come with the standardized feeds and identifiers public markets have, so reconciliation and look-through reporting depend heavily on how well disparate sources are normalized and governed. If your private allocations are growing, it can help to build that complexity into your requirements from the outset.
Are you separating true governance from platform breadth? Some vendors position themselves as fully integrated, front-to-back platforms. In practice, these can be costly and rigid, particularly if your portfolio structures and inter-fund relationships don’t map neatly onto a generic template. Modularity built around your actual operating model often produces better long-term outcomes.
Is data lineage built into your requirements, or an afterthought? Growing expectations for transparency require pension funds to clearly demonstrate how data is sourced, transformed, validated, and ultimately used in decision-making. As auditors, boards, and regulators place greater emphasis on data lineage, governance, and accountability, these capabilities are most effective when built into the data foundation and operating model from the outset, rather than being retrofitted over time.
Rimes empowers asset owners with a stronger data foundation
Rimes works with public pension funds and endowments as a specialist in enterprise data management, helping centralize and validate data across public and private markets, and supporting a single source of truth across custodians and managers. That kind of specialization can be useful regardless of what’s driving your review, whether that’s a formal RFI, an internal governance push, or a private markets strategy that has started to outgrow existing infrastructure.
We build long-term partnerships with asset owners, aligning to governance models that are, by necessity, deliberate and risk-aware. That means we’re happy to talk well before any formal process starts while you’re still shaping your thinking about what a modern data foundation needs to do for your organization, and where the real gaps in your current environment might sit.
Start the conversation early
If you’re thinking about your data foundation, whether that means preparing for a formal review or simply planning ahead, it’s worth having that conversation early. Contact our team today to talk through your priorities.
