Rhode Island Pension Investment Performance Among the Strongest Nationally

PROVIDENCE, RI – Rhode Island General Treasurer Seth Magaziner today announced that the Rhode Island Pension Fund outperformed 97% of public pension plans in the third quarter of 2021, continuing the consistent outperformance the Rhode Island plan has achieved under the Treasurer’s ‘Back to Basics’ Investment Plan.

According to the InvMetrics Public DB Database, which tracks the performance of 597 public pension plans, Rhode Island’s performance among funds in the database was in the 3rd percentile for the 3rd Quarter of 2021 and in the 5th percentile year to date.

In 2021, through September 30 the Rhode Island pension plan achieved a return of 11.9%, significantly ahead of the median public pension plan performance of 8.7%.

“My mission as Treasurer is to support economic opportunity and financial stability in Rhode Island by strengthening the pension fund that thousands of Rhode Island families rely on for retirement security,” said Rhode Island General Treasurer Seth Magaziner. “Our ‘Back-to-Basics’ Investment strategy is helping the pension fund to reach new all-time highs while consistently outperforming other public pension funds.”

Rhode Island has achieved strong performance relative to other pension funds since Treasurer Magaziner launched the ‘Back to Basics’ strategy in 2017. According to InvMetrics, Rhode Island has outperformed a majority of public pension funds in three of the last four full fiscal years, in addition to starting the current fiscal year ahead of most other plans.

Additional information about the Rhode Island pension system, including the ‘Back to Basics’ investment strategy and performance, can be found online as part of Treasurer Magaziner’s “Transparent Treasury” initiative at investments.treasury.ri.gov.

All performance is reported on a “net of fees” basis.