Recent events, including the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, have caused a downturn in financial markets. ACERA would like to reassure our members that your benefits are secure and are guaranteed by California state law. Your lifetime retirement allowance is not tied to investment returns, but is calculated based upon your years of service and salary. At ACERA, we invest for the long term, and anticipate that our returns may fluctuate from year to year. However, it’s our long term average earnings that drive the funding of the plan. For example, we’ve earned an average annual return of 9.0% on our investments over the last 25 years (as of 12/31/19), a period which includes the last major market downturn in 2008.

We’d love for you to learn more about our approach on our investments web page.