PennPSERS returns 8.1% for fiscal year, above benchmark

Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System, Harrisburg, returned a net 8.1% for the fiscal year ended June 30.

The $75.2 billion pension fund’s return exceeded its policy benchmark return of 7.1% for the period, according to a Sept. 3 news release.

For the three, five and 10 years ended June 30, PennPSERS returned an annualized net 4.6%, 7.6% and 6.8%, respectively. Benchmarks for those periods were not provided.

The pension fund had returned a net 3.5% for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2023.

For the most recent fiscal year, the pension fund’s return fell short of the median return of 9.7% among the 45 U.S. public pension funds whose returns have been tracked by Pensions & Investments as of Sept. 3.

PennPSERS’ most successful asset class for the fiscal year ended June 30 was public equities, which returned a net 19.5%, followed by public real assets at a net 8.9%; absolute return, 7.7%; private fixed income, 7.1%; private equity, 6%; public fixed income, 1.8%; and private real assets, 0.9%.

Results for private equity, private fixed income and private real assets lagged by one quarter. Benchmarks for individual asset classes were not provided.

As of June 30, the actual allocation was 27.4% public equities, 23.6% public fixed income, 16.1% private equity, 12.5% public real assets, 11.1% private real assets, 7.4% private fixed income, 4.4% cash and cash equivalents, 1.9% absolute return, 0.6% tail risk mitigation and -5% financing.