COLUMBUS, Ohio – The board governing the state’s teacher pension fund is considering awarding $11.1 million in bonuses to its investment staff, as retirees wait to see if the fund will offer a cost-of-living adjustment amid high inflation.
The pension had around $88.1 billion in assets at the end of March. It serves about 500,000 working public school teachers who pay into the plan, former teachers and retired teachers, who receive benefits.that the pension implemented over the past decade – including reducing, and then eliminating, a yearly cost-of-living adjustment.
The STRS performance-based bonuses are available only to staff in the investment department, which has 91 people out of a total of 489 STRS employees. No other associates, including senior management, receive a bonus, Minnich said.“It comes down to math—if investment managers outperform the board-approved benchmarks under the board-approved PBI policy, meaning the investment managers outperform the market, the investment managers receive an incentive for that outperformance,” he said.