Upgrades GPIF’s Cloud Platform for Collecting and Analyzing Index Information

ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Tatsushi Shingu, President and CEO; hereinafter "CTC") has upgraded the cloud platform provided to Government Pension Investment Fund (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Kazuto Uchida, President; hereinafter " GPIF") for GPIF to continuously receive, analyze, and utilize index^*1 information, which serves as a benchmark for its asset management. Through the provision of this cloud platform, we will help GPIF sophisticate its asset management with more diverse and flexible portfolio management, long-term asset growth and stable returns.

GPIF is an incorporated administrative agency responsible for management and investment of the Reserve Funds of the Government Pension Plans entrusted by the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare. Since 2020, it has adopted the Index Posting System^*2 to facilitate efficient information collection and also adopted tools for management and analysis of the collected data to enhance its investment performance. In recent years, GPIF has been working on strengthening data science-driven investment strategies to achieve active returns of its portfolio. Additionally, in its ESG and stewardship activities^*3, GPIF has been promoting initiatives aimed at establishing a PDCA cycle based on quantitative analysis, including effectiveness verification.

CTC has provided the upgraded cloud platform aimed at enhancing GPIF’s fund management. This platform collects and analyzes index data, proprietary data from FactSet, and financial, non-financial and benchmark datasets including third-party data, as well as ESG datasets from S&P Global. By leveraging Snowflake, a cloud-based AI data platform, large volumes of information in varying formats can be centrally consolidated, enabling multifaceted data analysis. The time required for data search and aggregation processing has been significantly reduced, with the processes that previously took several days now completed within a few hours. Additionally, as an infrastructure for the cloud platform, CTC has provided “C-NOAH”^*6, our cloud service that complies with the strict security requirements for the financial industry, such as FISC Guidelines^*4 and PCI DSS^*5. CTC is responsible not only for providing data collection and analysis functions but also for construction, maintenance, and operation of the cloud platform.

Going forward, CTC will further strengthen our support for efficient management of and sustainable investment strategy realization for the Reserve Funds, and will provide multifaceted support for enhancing GPIF’s fund management. With these supports, CTC aims to contribute to achieving stable and sustainable pension finances, ensuring the secure pension system for our future generations.