The National Pension Service (NPS) of Korea has chosen State Street to provide back and middle-office outsourcing services. The pension scheme, believed to be the world’s third largest, already used State Street for back-office services such as custody, fund accounting, performance and analytics, mandate compliance and securities lending services. The decision to include services such as Investment Book of Record (IBOR) record keeping, transaction management and trade processing services to all the fund’s overseas investments marks the first time NPS has outsourced middle-office functions. “This significant decision to combine middle-office and back-office operations will improve straight-through processing and data integration, which will reduce risk and increase speed,” said Ian Martin, head of global services and global exchange, Asia-Pacific, State Street. In a separate development, State Street has appointed Qi Wang, formerly of EDHEC Infra, to the newly created role of head of research at State Street Associates, the company academic affiliate. She is based in Singapore. ©2018 funds global asia