Austin (Texas) Firefighters Retirement Fund hired investment consultant Callan to complete a triennial project to evaluate its investment practices and performance.
The $1.1 billion pension fund's board approved the hiring at its Aug. 25 meeting, recently released meeting minutes showed.
The pension fund had issued an RFP in July to comply with Section 802.109 of the Texas Government Code, which requires a triennial review to be submitted to the Texas Pension Review Board, the state agency mandated to oversee all Texas public retirement systems.
In 2019, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 322, mandating public pension funds to provide "comprehensive analysis of the retirement system's investment process that covers all asset classes," according to the text of the law. Public funds at the time had until June 1, 2020, to submit their first evaluation reports.
Reports must be filed every three years for plans with more than $100 million in assets and every six years for plans with assets between $30 million and $100 million. Plans with less than $30 million are exempt from the reporting requirement.
The board used ongoing investment consultant Meketa Investment Group to complete the project for the first time in 2020, but for this latest RFP process, it had decided to put the services up for bid with a third-party firm and Meketa was not eligible to rebid, said Gina Gleason, board and operations specialist at the pension fund, when the RFP was issued.
There were two other finalist firms that made presentations at the Aug. 25 meeting, but the names of the firms were not disclosed.
