| Since July 1, 2012: | 2012 Accomplishments1.The total number of member accounts in the School, Judges, Patrol, State, County and Deferred Compensation plans grew to a record 117,331. The total assets of the plans increased from $9.6 billion to $9.8 billion. Investment performance as of June 30, 2012 was only 1% for the Defined Benefit plans. The investment return for the Cash Balance plans as of December 31, 2012 was 12.9%. 2.The Call Center answered approximately 37,188 phone calls and met with over 2,754 members who visited our office for retirement information and counseling. The Benefits Department processed 1,474 School retirements, 286 estimates for purchase of service and 171 actual purchases of services, 37 Qualified Domestic Relations Orders (QDROs) and 21 disability retirements. 3.NPERS distributed over $534.7 million in benefits to plan members in all six plans. The benefits included $433.2 million in monthly annuity payments and $101.5 million in refunds, rollovers, systematic withdrawals, and required minimum distributions. 4.The Legislature authorized another Cash Balance election for State and County Defined Contribution members. There were 1,264 State and 366 County members who elected to transfer to Cash Balance. On January 2, 2013 NPERS transferred 1,630 members with assets of $271 million to the Cash Balance plans. 5.Groom Law Group and Segal completed the Compliance Audit and made a presentation to the PERB and the Legislative Retirement Committee. NPERS reviewed and adopted most of the recommendations made in the audit by the end of the year. 6.NPERS revised 12 Rules and Regulations and held public hearings in August and September. The Rules and Regulations were approved by the Attorney Generals office, the Governors office, and submitted to the Secretary of State. 7.Our Finance and Accounting Department exercised careful control of agency expenditures and financial reporting. Our financial statements represent accurate and reliable information about NPERS. The State Auditor audited the State and County plans in the spring and the School, Judges and Patrol plans in the fall. 8.The PERB approved revisions made to the Three-Year Internal Audit Plan. The Internal Audit department completed 28 School employer audits and 30 County employer audits. 9.NPERS managers met at the disaster recover site and conducted a preliminary test of the IT equipment. The IT department worked with the Department of Corrections on network sharing at the facility. 10.Our Education Services staff traveled Nebraska providing seminars and training for over 2800 individuals. NPERS held 43 Retirement Planning seminars, 5 Financial Planning seminars, 6 employer workshops and11 special presentations for agencies and organizations. We continue to see a higher demand for seminars in Lincoln and Omaha than we are able to meet. 11.NPERS actuary, Buck Consultants performed a Five-Year Actuarial Experience Analysis of all plans and recommended changes to the economic and demographic assumptions. 12.NPERS worked with the actuary to provide the Legislature with actuarial reports and funding projections for the defined benefit and cash balance plans. The actuary also provided 30-year projections for the School and Patrol plans. 13.NPERS issued an Actuarial Services Request for Proposal (RFP) on November 15, 2012. Proposals were due January 4, 2013. 14.The Public Employees Retirement Board (PERB) added two new members. Stuart Simpson replaced Mark Shepard representing the school administrators. Ron Ecklund replaced Don Pederson as a public member in March. Sgt. Glenn Elwell resigned from the PERB in November. 15.The PERB met monthly throughout the year and participated in an educational retreat in July. Keith Brainard, Research Director for the National Association of State Retirement Administrators (NASRA), made a presentation on Public Pension Issues and Trends. Other retreat topics included Disability Retirements, Deferred Compensation Hardship Withdrawals, Rules and Regulation revisions, and Current Economic Outlook and Capital Market Forecasts. 16.The PERB and Nebraska Investment Council (NIC) met jointly in November for the presentations of the defined benefit actuarial reports by the actuary and the capital market assumptions by the investment consultants. 17.Data services processed over 34,500 pieces of incoming mail; 282,000 pieces of outgoing mail; and scanned 276,000 documents. NPERS continued efforts to correct addresses and social security numbers in the system and reduce return mail.18.Data services processed 16,702 beneficiary documents, 8,843 changes of information, 2,755 tax withholding forms and 2,922 direct deposits. NPERS verified service credit for 556 active members hired before 2001, in addition to other daily processing duties. 19.NPERS reduced administrative costs for all new retirees by eliminating monthly benefit payments by check. The vast majority of retirees receive benefit payments by direct deposit. NPERS has 39 members receiving Reliacard (debit card) payments. 20.We worked with Ameritas on several projects this year including the Cash Balance election, changes to the State and County member account statements to include fee disclosures required by the IRS, and programming to calculate late fees for County employers who do not submit retirement contributions on time. 21.NPERS established a Rollover provision to a Roth IRA for the State, County, School, Judges and Patrol plans. NPERS previously established a similar provision for the DCP plan in 2011. 22.NPERS IT staff trained and upgraded the IBM WebSphere application server software for our technology system at a substantial cost savings compared to using an outside vendor. 2013 Accomplishments1.NPERS relocated our agency to 1526 K Street, Suite 400 in September. We moved the entire agency with 53 staff over a two-week period. We continued to answer phones, meet with walk-in visitors, process retirements and pay benefits during the move. 2.The total number of member accounts in the School, Judges, Patrol, State, County and Deferred Compensation plans grew to a record 119,420. The total assets of the plans increased from $9.8 billion to a record $11.1 billion. Investment performance as of June 30, 2013 was 12.7% for the Defined Benefit plans. The investment return for the Cash Balance plans as of December 31, 2013 was 18.3%. 3.The Call Center answered approximately 38,047 phone calls and met with 2,421 members who visited our office for retirement information and counseling. The Benefits Department processed 1,644 School retirements, 261 estimates for purchase of service and 170 actual purchases of services, 61 Qualified Domestic Relations Orders (QDROs) and 35 disability retirements. 4.NPERS distributed over $606 million in benefits to plan members in all six plans. The benefits included $477 million in monthly annuity payments and $129 million in refunds, rollovers, systematic withdrawals, and required minimum distributions. 5.After 4.5 years and numerous correspondence, the IRS issued favorable determination letters for the School, Judges, State and County plans in May, 2013. We did not receive a response to our application for the State Patrol plan. 6.NPERS revised 5 of our Rules and Regulations and held public hearings in September. The Rules and Regulations were approved by the Attorney Generals office, the Governors office, and submitted to the Secretary of State. 7.Our Finance and Accounting Department began preparations to implement the new Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB 67 and 68) financial reporting changes. We exercised careful control of agency expenditures and financial reporting. Our financial statements represent accurate and reliable information about NPERS. 8.The State Auditor audited the State and County plans in the spring and the School, Judges and Patrol plans in the fall. We continued to resolve prior audit points and reduced the number of audit points in the State and County plans from seven to two last year. 9.The PERB approved revisions made to the Three-Year Internal Audit Plan. The Internal Audit department completed 35 School employer audits and 32 County employer audits.10.Our Education Services staff traveled Nebraska providing seminars and training for over 2500 individuals. NPERS held 46 Retirement Planning seminars, 3 Financial Planning seminars, 6 employer workshops and 9 special presentations for agencies and organizations. 11.NPERS new actuary, Cavanaugh Macdonald Consulting performed their first actuary valuations for the School, Judges and Patrol plans and presented the reports to the PERB and the Legislative Retirement Committee. NPERS staff worked with the new actuaries to transition the actuarial services and develop the content and format of the new reports. 12.NPERS met with the actuary to provide input for the development of the 30-year projection modeling software for the School, Judges and Patrol plans which should be completed in 2014. 13.NPERS completed the CEM Benchmarking study comparing NPERS services with other public retirement systems in a similar peer group. NPERS total pension administrative cost averaged $68 per active annuitant. This was $53 below the peer average of $121 per annuitant. The study reviewed agency costs and considered economies of scale, member services provided, transaction volumes, and productivity. 14.Darrell Fisher was appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Legislature to represent the State Patrol plan on the Public Employees Retirement Board. 15.The PERB members transitioned from paper documents to electronic files using tablets at board meetings reducing monthly mail and copy expenses. 16.The PERB met monthly throughout the year and participated in an educational retreat in July. Meredith Williams, Executive Director of the National Council on Teacher Retirement (NCTR), was the keynote speaker and presented a Commentary of the Public Pension Environment. Other retreat topics included the CEM Benchmarking Report, School Compensation and Health Care, and the Actuary Transition Report 17.The PERB and Nebraska Investment Council (NIC) met jointly in November for the presentations of the defined benefit actuarial reports by the actuary and the capital market assumptions by the investment consultants. 18.Data services processed over 33,357 pieces of incoming mail; 220,915 pieces of outgoing mail; and scanned 302,617 documents. NPERS continues to correct addresses and social security numbers in the system and reduce return mail.19.Data services processed 16,624 beneficiary documents, 8,054 changes of information, 2,978 tax withholding forms and 3,201 direct deposits. NPERS verified service credit for 644 active members in addition to other daily processing duties. 20.The IT Department completed numerous projects including upgrading the Traverse accounting software, upgrading all workstations to Windows 7, and significant analysis and programming of the School salary capping changes to NPRIS.2014 Accomplishments1.The total number of member accounts in the School, Judges, Patrol, State, County and Deferred Compensation plans grew to a record 121,920. The total assets of the plans increased from $11.1 billion to a record $12.6 billion. Investment performance as of June 30, 2014 was 18% for the Defined Benefit plans. The investment return for the Cash Balance plans as of December 31, 2014 was 6.9%. 2.The Call Center answered approximately 41,220 phone calls and met with 2,390 members who visited our office for retirement information and counseling. The Benefits Department processed 1,648 School retirements, 248 estimates for purchase of service and 135 actual purchases of services, 37 Qualified Domestic Relations Orders (QDROs) and 29 disability retirements. 3.NPERS distributed over $654 million in benefits to plan members in all six plans. The benefits included $519 million in monthly annuity payments and $135 million in refunds, rollovers, systematic withdrawals, and required minimum distributions. 4.NPERS processed 6,717 refunds, rollovers and required minimum distributions in 2014, a 42% increase over 2013. 5.NPERS submitted applications for the new five-year Cycle C IRS determination letters for the School, Judges, Patrol, State and County plans in January, 2014. We received favorable determination letters for the School, Judges, State and County plans. The application for the State Patrol plan is still pending. 6.NPERS revised Rule and Regulation Chapter 15 on purchase of service. NPERS held a hearing to revise Rule and Regulation Chapter 18 on contribution and benefit adjustments. This rule is pending approval of the Governors office. 7.Our Finance and Accounting Department worked with the actuaries and implemented the new Government Accounting Standards Board rule (GASB 67) on financial reporting for the School, Judges and State Patrol plans, FYE 6-30-14. GASB 67 will be implemented in the financial reports for the State and County plans, FYE 12-31-14. 8.We exercised careful control of agency expenditures and financial reporting. Our financial statements represent accurate and reliable information about NPERS. 9.The State Auditor audited the State and County plans in the spring and the School, Judges and Patrol plans in the fall. We continued to resolve prior audit points and reduced the number of audit points in our audit reports. 10.The PERB approved revisions made to the Three-Year Internal Audit Plan. The Internal Audit department completed 33 School employer audits and 40 County employer audits.11.NPERS actuaries completed the 30-year projection modeling software for the School, Judges and Patrol plans. The software has been used by staff and the legislature to study plan funding and design. 12.The County Cash Balance plan exceeded 100% funding as of December 31, 2013 and the PERB voted to grant a 0.29% dividend to 8,199 County CB members totaling $916,192.63.13.The increase in the CPI-W on June 30, 2014 was 2.04% and 20,657 School, Judges and Patrol retirees and beneficiaries received a cost of living adjustment (COLA) in July. 14.PERB Chairman Denis Blank appointed an Assumed Rate Committee to study the 8% assumed rate being used by NPERS defined benefit plans. Randall Rehmeier chaired the committee. Members of the committee were Elaine Stuhr, Janis Elliott and Dennis Leonard. The committee held four meetings to study the issue and recommended that the PERB maintain the 8% assumed rate pending an actuarial experience study in 2016. 15.The PERB and Nebraska Investment Council (NIC) met jointly in November for the presentations of the defined benefit actuarial reports by the actuary and the capital market assumptions by the investment consultants. The Board and Council members discussed NPERS assumed rate of return. 16.The PERB participated in an educational retreat in July. Retreat topics included the Actuary Modeling Software, Assumed Rate of Return, Investment Education, and Return to Work policies. 17.Our Education Services staff traveled Nebraska providing seminars and training for over 2400 individuals. NPERS held 42 Retirement Planning seminars, 4 Financial Planning seminars and 7 employer workshops. 18.Data services processed over 37,052 pieces of incoming mail; 253,103 pieces of outgoing mail; and scanned 306,872 documents. There were 2,862 member accounts that were validated for service credit. 19.Data services completed a five-year beneficiary project of entering 29,709 school member beneficiary forms into our NPRIS data system. Data Services also processed 8,451 changes of information, 3,128 tax withholding forms and 3,151 direct deposits. 20.The IT Department completed the migration of NPERS owned physical servers and backup infrastructure to the OCIO virtual servers, storage and backup infrastructure. We programmed and tested the first phase of the basic account requirements for the new Tier 2 of the School plan. We began the process of changing our imaging technology from FileNet to OnBase. 2015 Accomplishments1.The number of member accounts in the School, Judges, Patrol, State, County and Deferred Compensation plans grew by 3,100 to a record total of 125,033. The total assets of the plans increased from $12.6 billion to a record $12.9 billion. Investment performance as of June 30, 2015 was 3.9% for the Defined Benefit plans. The investment return for the Cash Balance plans as of December 31, 2015 was only1.2%. 2.The Call Center answered a record number of 43,840 phone calls and met with 2,750 members who visited our office for retirement information and counseling. The Benefits Department processed 1,904 retirements, 202 estimates for purchase of service and 97 actual purchases of service, 43 Qualified Domestic Relations Orders (QDROs) and 30 disability retirements. 3.NPERS distributed over $719 million in benefits to plan members in all six plans. The benefits included $553 million in monthly annuity payments to over 24,000 members. NPERS processed 6,930 refunds, rollovers and required minimum distributions totaling $166 million.4.After waiting 6 years, NPERS received a favorable IRS determination letter for the State Patrol plan. We have now received favorable determination letters for all of NPERS five retirement plans. 5.NPERS received final approval from the Governor revising Rule and Regulation Chapter 18 on contribution and benefit adjustments to clarify language consistent with IRS requirements. 6.The Finance and Accounting Department worked closely with the actuaries and State Auditor providing data and feedback for both Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB) rules 67 and 68. We implemented GASB 67 for the State and County plans. We implemented GASB 68 for the School and County employers providing information that is used for their financial statements. GASB 68 includes plan information, the employers allocated share of contributions and net pension liability, the proportionate share of deferred outflows, inflows and total pension expense. 7.NPERS exercised careful control of agency expenditures and financial reporting. The financial statements represent accurate and reliable information about NPERS. 8.The State Auditor audited the State and County plans in the spring and the School, Judges and Patrol plans in the fall. NPERS had no reported audit points for the State and County audit and only one audit point for the School, Judges and Patrol audit. 9.The PERB approved revisions to the Three-Year Internal Audit Plan. The Internal Audit department completed 48 School employer audits and 12 County employer audits. 10.NPERS worked with Cavanaugh Macdonald, the actuaries, to prepare annual valuation reports for all five plans. In addition, the actuaries updated the 30-year projection models; prepared GASB 67 and 68 reports; and provided consulting services, cost studies and a report on the assumed rate of return for the Retirement Committee. 11.NPERS worked with Administrative Services Purchasing Bureau to prepare and to issue a Request for Proposal (RFP) for Record Keeping and Consulting Services for the State, County and Deferred Compensation plans. 12.The State and County Cash Balance plans exceeded 100% funding as of December 31, 2014. The PERB voted to grant a 4.53% dividend to State CB members and a 5.81% dividend to County CB members. The total dividends paid were $67,938,455. 13.There was a decrease in the CPI-W for the year ending on June 30, 2015; therefore the School, Judges and Patrol retirees and beneficiaries did not received a cost of living adjustment (COLA) in 2015. 14.The PERB and Nebraska Investment Council (NIC) met jointly in November for the presentations of the defined benefit actuarial valuation reports by the actuary and the capital market assumptions by the investment consultants. 15.The PERB participated in an educational retreat in July, The agenda included a presentation by guest speaker, Dana Bilyeu, Executive Director of the National Association of State Retirement Administrators and a presentation by the actuaries on funding policies and mortality assumptions. There was a special panel presentation by retirement plan member groups from the Nebraska Council of School Administrators, the Nebraska School Education Association, the Nebraska Association of County Officials, the Nebraska Association of Public Employees, the State Troopers Association of Nebraska, and the District Court Judges Association. 16.The Education Services staff traveled Nebraska providing seminars and training for over 2,561 members and 349 employers. NPERS held 47 Retirement Planning and Financial Planning seminars, 8 special presentations, and 7 employer workshops. NPERS partnered with NCSA and held the first school employer webinar with 125 employer reporting agents participating.17.Data Services processed over 42,348 pieces of incoming mail; 194,454 pieces of outgoing mail; and scanned 257,536 documents. There were 5,395 member accounts that were validated for service credit, double the previous year. For the first time, NPERS included beneficiary names on the annual School member account statements.18.Data Services processed 9,600 beneficiary records for State and County members. NPERS processed 8,887 changes of information, 3,085 tax withholding forms and 3,260 direct deposits forms. The majority of forms were processed within 2 days of receipt.19.The IT Department completed the migration from FileNet to OnBase for scanning, storing and retrieving documents, on schedule, within budget and with minimal impact to the agency and our members. NPERS converted over 5 million pages of content and converted and tested over 80 workflow processes. The IT Department also completed phase two of the new tier requirements for the School plan. 20.NPERS Director and Legal Counsel responded to Retirement Committee requests for research, analysis and reports regarding all of the plans, the assumed rate of return, military service credit, Patrol plan salaries, the Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP) and other retirement issues. |