OPERS video: Investments drive our success
Two-thirds of our income comes from skillful money management
The Investments division of the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System skillfully manages more than $87 billion that is used to pay our members’ pension benefits and provide retirees access to health care coverage.
This video presents an overview of how the OPERS investment team approaches its task, seeking solid returns while maintaining transparency in all of its actions.
Prudent management of the OPERS investment portfolio for the long term allows us to achieve our No. 1 goal: Provide retirement security for our members.
Michael Pramik
Michael Pramik is communication strategist for the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System and editor of the PERSpective blog. As an experienced business journalist, he clarifies complex pension policies and helps members make smart choices to secure their retirement.
Compared to other states I don’t think your investments are doing that well. As a spouse whose health insurance is going up from 400 a month to 740 a month you have let many people down. At first it was because of a Cadillac tax that msy or may not go into effect until 2020 and may be repealed.Sad situation for many
Agreed, my spouse went from $560 to well over $1200 a month. I will be paying more than half of my monthly retirement for our healthcare.
Your phone contact system is messed up. I have no way to reset my pass word because I messed up the challenge question and your phone puts me on hold then cuts me off with a hang up please contact me. I have no way to get ahold of you.
Please call OPERS at 1-800-222-7377 as we can better assist you.
according to the article in todays Toledo Blade, your view and their view is totally different. your team of investors has been lax on checking on the amount of return on our money. right now the hedge funds are bleeding the amount of money from our returns with very high rates they charge. we perhaps need a new group of investment people on board that monitor these funds more closely. it is bad enough that us older retirees are being thrown under the bus to keep PERS above water, so to speak.
Gordon,
The genesis of the article in the Blade was an activist group that has no interest in providing a balanced argument regarding hedge funds.
Our goal with hedge funds is to preserve capital when markets are down, and to provide competitive returns that have a low correlation to traditional asset classes. In other words, they “hedge” investments in other categories. That provides diversification and reduces the volatility of our returns. That’s a key concept of investing. On a risk-adjusted basis, our hedge funds are less risky than traditional stocks.
Unfortunately, we didn’t see that angle in the Blade story.
Further, you should know that we are always reviewing our investments and our investment outlook. We’ve recently lowered our long-term, annual return expectation from 8 percent to 7.5 percent to reflect a more-realistic investment environment.
–Ohio PERS
Sounds like you are lowering your expectations as another excuse for subsequently lowering our COLA’s! Gives you a another built in excuse. I posted about he COLA under another one of your articles and ‘explanations”. After seeing the COLA questionnaire PERS sent out,it appears that the politicians at the statehouse have already made the decision to cut/eliminate the COLA as retirees currently know it.
Markets are at all time highs. And,their are many options beyond hedge funds for ‘diversification'(your word) that are available to competent in investors. Maybe its time to take a closer look at the investors.
You are proposing to use a CPI on which to base retiree COLA’s. If any of you have done any research into the most commonly used CPI you will know that it does NOT accurately reflect the rise in the cost of living for middle and lower class retirees. My rent goes up more than 3% every year. Our health care costs go up by more than 3% a year. The cost to help feed and clothe our granddaughter goes up by more than 3% a year etc.,etc.
How about this? When I worked as a parole officer our retirement contribution taken out of our paychecks was raised. We had no input. But, we were OK with it because we were told that by paying more into retirement upfront, what we were promised for retirement would be there for us. That promise is being broken. But,how about raising the currently employee contribution along with lowering the annual COLA adjustment to 2.5% for EVERY retiree not just the currently retired. And,the politicians have to write that into law so it can’t be changed without the politicians at the statehouse and PERS standing up publicly and on the record voting to change it again.
This is beyond the point now where having rich politicians and administrators making decisions that adversely affect the rest of us is getting very frustrating.
Lee Adams
Can you please tell me where I can find the specific investments that you have. What stocks and how much, what bonds and how much, hedge funds and how much etc. I would appreciate some transparency before you decide to mess with my cost of living increases that is already less than my medical increases.
My late father worked for the old Central National Bank. They decided to forgo cost of living for a couple of years and then made it permanent. He never got a cost of living increase again. I am worried.
You can find more information about our investments on the OPERS website at https://www.opers.org/investments/.
Julie, OPERS