By Muskan Arora
The $75.2bn Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement
System announced its fund performance of 8.14% for the fiscal year ended June
30.
The system exceeded its policy benchmark of 7.1% or 107 basis
points, as per the news release on September 3.
Over the year, June 30, 2023 through July 1, 2024, the system’s
assets rose by $2.9bn.
The pension fund returned 1.49% for the quarter; 4.6% for 3
years; 7.6% for 5 years; 6.8% for 10 years, with a long-term rate of return at
7%.
“The one-year net results continue to be reassuring,” said
Ben Cotton, CIO of PSERS, adding that “there is a lot of work that still needs
to be done as the fund begins a routine 3-year reassessment of its strategic
asset allocation this fall.”
Private market assets returned 4.80% against a benchmark of
3.57% and total public markets assets returned 10.5% against a benchmark of
8.60% for FY2024.
Public equities had one of the highest returns for the
fiscal year ended June 30 at 19.5%, followed by public real assets at 8.9%,
absolute return at 7.7%, private fixed income at 7.1%, private equity at 6%,
public fixed income at 1.8% and private real assets at 0.9%.
While benchmarks for individual asset classes wasn’t
provided, private equity, private fixed income and private real assets lagged
by one quarter.
As of June 30, the system allocates 27.4% to public equity,
23.6% to its public fixed income sleeve, 16.1% to private equity, 12.5% to public
real assets, 11.1% to private real assets, 7.4% to private fixed income, 4.4% to
cash and cash equivalents, 1.9% to absolute returns and 0.6% to tail risk
mitigation.
