To our members, employers & constituents:
In this time of uncertainty, I wanted to take a moment to let you know that in spite of the current COVID-19 pandemic, the resulting economic and capital market situation, and the recent Executive Orders from Governor Ducey to ensure your safety, the Arizona State Retirement System (ASRS) is still fully operational in all core services, including making all pension, disability, and health insurance payments. Benefit payments are not impacted, and retirees can expect their monthly benefits to continue to be paid on time every month.
The ASRS continues to process all retirement applications, forfeitures, and similar service requests, as well as collecting contributions, and we expect to continue doing so throughout this uniquely stressful period. The only services we are not providing at this time are in-person individual and group meetings. Rather than risk your health, that of our community and employees, we have migrated all meetings to telephonic or web-based platforms. As such, please use our website to find answers to most of your questions, log into your myASRS account to send us a Secure Message, or call to speak with a Benefits Advisor from our Member Advisory Center.
It should be noted that state agencies, including the ASRS, have been subject to periodic call center outages over the past several days due to significantly increased call volumes which had exceeded the state’s capacity for in-bound calls. This situation appears to have been resolved, and we will keep you advised should that change. As such, I do not expect any significant service delivery interruptions other than the migration from physical service delivery to electronic service delivery. Our organization will be continue to be highly functional and service-oriented even as the majority of our staff are now remote-based.
The investment portfolio continues to be professionally and actively managed during these volatile periods, with particular focus on liquidity, opportunity, and rebalancing.
In summary, our goal is to ensure that our efforts and actions enable you to focus on other, more pressing aspects of your life, knowing that your ASRS benefits will continue uninterrupted. Should you need assistance, we are still here for you.
To learn more about ASRS' response to the current situation, visit ASRS Service Updates in Response to COVID-19 . We encourage you to bookmark this page and check back frequently as it is continually updated with the latest developments that impact the ASRS.
