OPERS rated low-cost, high-service pension

CEM Benchmarking says system ranks highly among its industry peers

By Michael Pramik, Ohio Public Employees Retirement System

Dec. 11, 2025 – The Ohio Public Employees Retirement System provides a better level of service at a lower cost than its peers, says an independent pension industry consultant.

CEM Benchmarking annually conducts a study to see how global pension systems rate compared with each other in various cost, service and investment metrics. At the November OPERS Board of Trustees meeting, CEM Benchmarking Director Christopher Doll said OPERS is a low- to median-cost fund administrator that provides high service to its members.

Seventy-four pension systems participate in the benchmarking service, including 42 outside the United States. The study compared OPERS to a custom peer group of 13 U.S. pension systems for data through the end of 2024. 

Administration

Doll said OPERS’ total pension administration cost of $53 per active, inactive and retired members was $35 below the peer average of $88. That cost decreased by 3% during 2024 and by 1.3% annually over the past eight years. That compares favorably to OPERS’ peers, which saw their average cost increase by 4% this year and by 2.7% annually over the past eight years.

When measuring what it takes to operate the system on a daily basis, OPERS’ costs of $46 per member was $34 below the peer average of $80.

CEM said one reason that OPERS has a lower operating cost is that we have 1.3 front-office full-time employees per 10,000 members, vs. a peer average of 2.5. OPERS also has lower costs per full-time employee and lower support costs per member than our peers, in large part reflecting our technology investment.

Between 2017 and 2024, OPERS’ total per-member pension administration cost decreased 1.3% annually, while peers’ per-member costs increased by 2.7%.

Service

The report noted that OPERS’ total service score was 88, far above the peer median of 82. CEM defines higher service as “more channels, faster turnaround times, more availability, more choice, better content and higher quality.”

OPERS’ service score for the active member experience of 86 ranks above the peer median of 78. Our service score for inactive members is 72, compared to the peer median of 73. Our service score for the retiring member experience of 89 is above the peer median of 80, and the score for the annuitant experience of 93 is above the median of 90.

OPERS scored well in terms of service for purchases and transfers-in, member statements and contact center accessibility.

Doll told the trustees that the nature of member calls changed over the past eight years. Members are spending more time with pension system representatives per call, and call wait times generally have risen. However, OPERS has seen its call wait time reduced over the past two years, from an average of 269 seconds to an average of 133 seconds.

Doll also said that pension plans with cloud access are beginning to use artificial intelligence to improve their operations through features such as call transcripts, document management and the use of chatbots to process member information and answer questions.

Investments

OPERS also uses the CEM survey to benchmark our investment results relative to 136 U.S. public plans with a median size of $8.6 billion, and a peer group of 15 U.S. public plans with a median size of $114.7 billon. Here are results of the survey for the five years ending Dec. 31, 2024:

Returns

• OPERS’ 5-year net total return of 6.5% is below the U.S. public median of 7.5% and below the peer median of 7.5%. The primary driver of this variance is OPERS’ asset allocation, which has a lower exposure to alternatives.

Value Add

• OPERS’ 5-year investment staff net value-add is 0.3%. That’s below both the U.S. public median of 0.8% and the peer median of 1.2%. However, if CEM were to standardize OPERS’ more-competitive private equity benchmark to make it similar to its peers, the net value add would be 0.7%.
• Staff’s 0.3% active-management value-add translates into about $1.9 billion over the past five years.

Cost

• OPERS’ total investment cost of 0.334% is lower than our peers’ cost.
• Over the five years reviewed, investment costs decreased by 0.099% because of the movement toward a lower-cost asset mix and staff’s success in paying less than our peers for similar services.

Risk

OPERS’ Defined Benefit Fund portfolio risk, or standard deviation, of 11.6% is only slightly above the U.S. public pension system median of 11.5%.