PERA Outperforms Peers

CEM Benchmarking: PERA provides high service at a lower cost than others

A newly released report finds Colorado PERA continues to provide its members and retirees with a high level of service at a low cost relative to other public pension plans.

CEM Benchmarking, which produced the report, presented the results to the PERA Board of Trustees at the Board’s September planning session.

CEM compiles data from other pension systems around the world and compares them on factors such as administrative costs, customer service interactions, online service availability, and others. PERA is benchmarked against a peer group of 11 similarly sized U.S. state pension plans and consistently ranks highly compared to its peers, earning high scores for service delivery and costs per member.

About PERA’s Score

For 2024, PERA’s total service score was 87—above our peers’ median score of 81. Our score weighs the service experience for PERA’s active, inactive, and retired members. Here’s where we excelled:

• Our total pension administration cost was $63 per member, $8 below the peer average of $71.
• Our pensions are set up without cashflow interruptions for 100% of our active members and survivors, above the peer average of 84.9%.
• Our average call wait time was 206 seconds compared to our peers’ average of 679 seconds.

PERA is proud to be a low-cost, high-service retirement benefits provider. Our latest CEM score aligns with our commitment to excellent service to our members.