We know that, as an ASRS member, you expect excellent service while making responsible use of the resources entrusted to us. One of the ways the ASRS measures how well we are meeting that responsibility is through an annual benchmarking analysis. For 2025, this analysis once again resulted in a top ranking in Service while maintaining our industry-low levels of Cost.
For over twenty years, the ASRS (and approximately forty other US and non-US pension funds for various periods) have partnered with a third-party organization, CEM Benchmarking, to measure and track hundreds of operational data points from every corner of the agency. This partnership has been instrumental in allowing us to evaluate where we are succeeding as an organization and where we have opportunities for improvement.
This data is distilled into a comprehensive service and cost analysis, which allows us to compare our performance against peer pension systems of a similar size, as well as systems of all sizes from across the globe, with the following results:
Customer Service – Service to our members is our business
We are very pleased to announce that, for fiscal year 2025, the ASRS once again ranked number one in service across both our peer group of fifteen US pension funds, as well as the entire CEM universe of 46 global pension funds.
Administrative Costs – Costs mitigation is also our business
In addition, the ASRS had the second lowest cost per member in our peer group. Specifically, the ASRS reduced its administrative costs by 0.6% per member per year over the 8-year period ending 2025, whereas our peers had cost increases of 4.8% per member per year over the same period. The ASRS administration cost per member was $78 in 2018 and was reduced to $75 in 2025. As a result, the ASRS administrative costs per member are $59 below the peer average of $134 and $76 below the universe average of $151.
The ASRS is driven to provide top-tier service while continuing to drive administrative costs per member down.
