New ATRS Retirees + Member Milestones & Benefits

July means hot weather, but for ATRS it also means new retirees. Each year, about half of our retiring members choose July 1 as their retirement date. Those new retirees will receive their first benefit payment later this month.

Our preliminary numbers show that we will add 1,350 new retirees this month, and 665 members will move into TDROP. This is a slight drop from last year (we added 1,516 retirees last July) but well within our typical numbers for the last few years.

If you are one of these new retirees, congratulations! You will now be enjoying the benefit and retirement security that you have earned through your many years of hard work in public education. I hope that you will be able to take some time to relax and enjoy your retirement.

For most of our existing retirees, July also means an increase in their retirement benefit, thanks to the ATRS 3% cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). Every year, effective July 1, ATRS provides a 3% COLA for members who have been retired for at least 12 months. The 3% increase is what is known as a “simple” increase, because it is calculated as 3% of your base amount – your original retirement benefit calculation when you first retired.

You will see the increased benefit amount in your check for July, which should go out July 24. After you receive your July payment, if anything appears to be off, please call us at (501) 682-1517 or email us at info@artrs.gov.

BENEFITS FOR ACTIVELY EMPLOYED MEMBERS

Although the focus this month is on our retirees, please remember that our actively employed members have benefits they can access when needed, even if they have not yet retired. One of the most important of these is disability retirement.

If you have at least five years’ worth of ATRS service credit, including reciprocal service, and you become unable to do your job as a result of a total and permanent disabling medical condition, you may be eligible to receive disability retirement benefits. You do not have to be found disabled by the Social Security Administration before applying for disability retirement; if you have become unable to work, you can go ahead and apply for ATRS disability retirement before you receive any determination from SSA. Applications are considered by the ATRS Medical Committee which is made up of physicians.

The most important thing to understand about disability retirement is that the law sets very strict deadlines for when a member can apply. A member must be in “Active Status” to apply for disability retirement. This means the member must have been actively employed by an ATRS-covered employer and earned at least one-quarter year of service credit, in the current or previous fiscal year. If you wait and do not apply within that time, you will lose your right to apply for disability retirement.

The disability retirement application process can be complicated, and there are very specific deadlines and procedures that must be met. If you or someone you know is an ATRS member who is not able to work due to a medical condition, I urge you to call or email ATRS now so that you can find out what your options may be.

Additional information on disability retirement is here: https://www.artrs.gov/disability

MEMBER MILESTONES

Aside from disability retirement, there are other benefits that kick in as members accumulate service credit in ATRS. Here are some of the key ones:

• As an ATRS member with at least 5 years of service credit, you are guaranteed a monthly retirement benefit once you reach age 60. If you pass away while actively employed by an ATRS-covered employer, your surviving spouse and children may be eligible to receive survivor benefits. And you may be eligible to apply for disability retirement if you become unable to work.
• With 10 years of service credit, your family becomes eligible for a lump-sum death benefit between $6,667 and $10,000 if you pass away while actively employed by an ATRS-covered employer, or after you retire. Once you retire, you are also eligible to receive an additional $50 stipend each month to help with your health insurance costs.
• At 16 years of service credit, if you are contributory for all of those 16 years, you will have earned enough service credit that when you retire, you will receive a monthly retirement benefit that is at least one-third of your Final Average Salary.
• With 25 years of service credit, you may take early retirement with a reduction in your benefit amount, depending on how close you are to age 60 or to having 28 years of service credit.
• At 28 years of service credit, you are eligible to retire at any age with full benefits. If you have 28 years of contributory service, your monthly retirement benefit will be 60% of your Final Average Salary. You can also choose to enter TDROP with a reduction in your TDROP deposit amount for early entry.
• At 30 years of service credit, you may enter TDROP with no early-entry reduction in your TDROP deposit amount.

More information on Member Milestones may be found here: https://www.artrs.gov/membership-milestones

If you ever have a question or concern about your ATRS benefits, you are welcome to call or email me anytime. My contact information is below. I am always glad to talk to ATRS members and answer their questions.

Mark White
Executive Director, ATRS
MarkW@artrs.gov
Office: (501) 621-8853
Cell: (501) 541-2057

ATRS Investments: Global, Diversified, Professionally Managed

ATRS has been investing and safeguarding retirement assets for Arkansas’s public education professionals since 1937. The investment returns that we generate enable us to keep the promise of a guaranteed lifetime retirement benefit for our members.

I often get questions from members about our investments – where and how we invest, who is responsible, and how we are doing. I find that members sometime don’t fully comprehend the size and reach of our investments. We at ATRS are responsible for an investment portfolio of more than $22 billion. Just last year, our investments added more than $2 billion to the System’s assets, funds that will be used to pay future retirement benefits for ATRS members.

In their last few meetings, the ATRS Board has approved several new investments, each of them ranging from $40 million to $100 million. That’s a lot of money, and we firmly believe that every dollar counts. But for perspective, remember that a $40 million investment represents less than 0.2% of our overall portfolio.

I describe our ATRS investment portfolio as having three important qualities. Our portfolio is global, it is diversified, and it is professionally managed.

Global Investments: There are more than 60 stock exchanges operating around the world, trading stock in thousands of different companies. ATRS is invested in most of those stock exchanges and has stock ownership in most of those companies. This means that ATRS has a stake in literally thousands of stocks and bonds all over the world.

The majority of our investment portfolio is in the United States, because the US is the world’s largest economy. When US stocks are down, our global investments help balance out any losses and ensure that we can profit from other thriving markets around the world.

It can be surprising to know just how far our global reach is. ATRS has a stake in everything from Apple stock in the US, to corporate bonds issued in Japan by Mitsubishi, to government bonds issued by Peru.

Diversification: ATRS spreads its funds among many different types of investments. A little less than half of our portfolio is invested in stocks, and another 20% is invested in fixed income products like bonds. The rest of the portfolio is invested in funds that are not publicly traded. This includes things like private equity, real estate, timber, and agriculture.

The reason that we diversify our investment portfolio among many types of investments is that it smooths out the ups and downs of investing (or, to put it in the technical language of the professionals, it reduces volatility). When one type of investment is down, other types are steady or up, balancing out any losses.

Professional Management: Outside expertise is what brings it all together. ATRS hires top notch experts, people who manage assets for large corporations, wealthy families, and other large institutional investors like ATRS. And that gives us access to investment opportunities that just aren’t available to the public or to individual investors.

Under state law, ATRS cannot make an investment without receiving the “advice” of an outside investment consultant. Our investment consultants advise the ATRS Board and staff on our overall investment strategy. They make recommendations for the selection of individual investment managers to invest ATRS funds. The consultants then monitor the work of those managers to ensure we are getting the best return for our money.

Over the years, ATRS has worked with hundreds of different investment managers all over the world. If you’re curious to know what investment managers ATRS uses, we publish a list every year in our Annual Comprehensive Financial Report. You can find last year’s report, as well as the reports for the last 20 years, at this link:

https://www.artrs.gov/publications

These three qualities of the ATRS investment portfolio – global reach, diversification, and professional management, have paid off for ATRS members with excellent returns over time. According to our most recent investment reports, ATRS has a 10-year return of 8.0%. That return puts us in the top 3% percentile of public pension funds around the country.    

If you ever have a question or concern about ATRS investments, you are welcome to call or email me anytime. My contact information is below. I am always glad to talk to ATRS members and answer their questions.   

Mark White
Executive Director, ATRS
MarkW@artrs.gov
Office: (501) 621-8853
Cell: (501) 541-2057