Pension Transparency: Indiana

Analysis of Indiana's policies

Teachers, policymakers and taxpayers deserve accurate and reliable information about the costs and benefits of the public pension systems they support.

Just as teachers can easily obtain their salary schedules, they should have access to information about pensions so that they can make informed decisions about their career and retirement futures. While Indiana provides teachers with an annual benefits statement, the report includes very limited information about the value of pension benefits. Indiana does not provide teachers with information on how their benefits accrue for each year of service, the amount contributed each year by teachers and employers on behalf of teachers, or the projected value of a teacher's contributions based on different assumptions about the rate of return expected (e.g. 4%, 6%, and 8%). Indiana also does not provide teachers with transparent information about the opportunity cost of leaving contributions in the system by reporting how much might be earned if teachers were to put contributions into a personal retirement savings account.

Teachers in Indiana enroll in a hybrid plan, which means that employee and employer contributions should be sufficient to pre-fund the employee's pension. Indiana, however, does not provide teachers with clear information about how their contributions are being used, including how benefits are distributed across teachers of different cohorts and teachers with different career lengths.

Public disclosures on teacher pensions in Indiana also lack transparency. Indiana does not report projections for future contributions required to fully amortize the system's total unfunded liabilities, information that would allow policymakers and employers to better plan their budgets in the short and longer terms. These projections should be reported under a range of assumptions about the rate of return on investments, not just under the system's own assumption, which would allow stakeholders in Indiana to appropriately assign risk to the system's obligations and provide clarity about potential unfunded liabilities facing taxpayers.

The Government Accountability Standards Board (GASB) requires public retirement systems to disclose who makes employer contributions, and the proportion of total contributions for which each contributor is responsible. Although all states' pension systems collect this information, Indiana does not make these data readily available.

Indiana, like most states, reports the portion of total pension contributions that is normal cost and the proportion that is amortization cost. However, the state does not report information about whether it has taken on debt in order to pay for current or future retiree benefits (e.g. through pension obligation bonds or other instruments for raising capital). Even if the state has not taken on debt, it should disclose this information to the public as it is an important indicator of the state's overall health and stability.

Citation

Indiana Teachers' Retirement Fund, Actuarial Valuation Report as of June 30, 2015.

Recommendations for Indiana

Provide teachers with the information necessary to understand their retirement benefits.
Indiana should provide much more detailed information to teachers about how their benefits accrue at different points during their careers, as well as information about the opportunity costs related to any contributions made into the system. The plan should also disclose to teachers how their contributions are being used (i.e. whether they all are directed at prefunding their own retirement, or whether a portion of their contributions are used to help pay for retirement benefits of other members).

Report to policymakers and the public data that give a complete representation of the system's financial health.
Indiana should also report projections for future contributions necessary to pay off its unfunded liabilities under a range of assumptions about its discount rate. GASB requires systems to disclose who makes the employer contributions, and Indiana should make this report available on its web site. Finally, the state should disclose in its reports whether or not the system has taken debt service to pay for retirement benefits.

State response to our analysis

Indiana did not respond to repeated request to review this analysis.