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VBDO uses new platform for research

Every year, VBDO publishes among other research its pension fund benchmark, a comparative study of the 50 largest Dutch pension funds. They answer 50 questions, for which they have to substantiate the answers with documentation. This yields an average of about 60 documents per fund. All the information must be stored and worked out in one system. This presents complex challenges when it comes to good and streamlined collaboration.

Sara Heinsbroek, project manager of the benchmark: “In order to be able to successfully carry out this research, we have recently started using the digital platform Holly. When using our old platform, quite a few things went wrong, which meant that a lot of time was spent getting things straight. Last year we started a pilot with Holly Platform and it is now fully and satisfactorily in use: Holly is very user-friendly for all the dozens of parties that work together in it, changes are automatically saved and managers can communicate with each other easily and clearly. We are really happy with it, it has been a very good step.”

Holly is a workflow tool developed by Lestrade for performing due diligence investigations at, among others, asset managers. The platform automates manager selection and monitoring processes. In addition to VBDO, Lestrade uses this platform in her daily ODD work, and fiduciary managers, among others, use the platform.

Stan Leistra, partner at Lestrade, is also satisfied with the collaboration: “The use of Holly by VBDO fits very well within our ambition to make the entire asset management chain of Dutch pension funds more sustainable through collaboration on Holly. With the support of VBDO’s studies, Lestrade wants to contribute to the efficiency and further sustainability of the Dutch institutional asset management market”.