Iowa Public Employees' Retirement System, Des Moines, returned a net -3.9% for the fiscal year ended June 30.
The $40.1 billion pension fund's return exceeded its policy benchmark return of -4.1% for the period, said Shawna Lode, pension fund spokeswoman, in an email.
For the three, five and 10 years ended June 30, IPERS returned an annualized net 8.8%, 8.6% and 8.6%, respectively, compared to the respective benchmarks of 8.7%, 8.5% and 8.6%.
The pension fund had returned a net 29.6% for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2021.
For the most recent fiscal year, the pension fund was one of many that experienced negative returns due to a challenging market environment for public equities and fixed income. For the year ended June 30, the Russell 3000 index and Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond index returned -13.9% and -10.3%, respectively, in sharp contrast to returns of 44.2% and 4.6% for the year ended June 30, 2021.
IPERS did exceed the median return of -4.9% for the 60 public pension funds whose returns for the fiscal year ended June 30 have been tracked by Pensions & Investments as of Wednesday, primarily due to the pension fund's policy of allocating a total of 25% to alternative investments, which chalked up positive returns for the period.
By asset class, IPERS' top performer for the fiscal year ended June 30 was private real assets, which returned a net 30.4%, followed by private equity at 23.5% and private credit at 7.8%.
IPERS' alternative investment asset classes are benchmarked to their own past performance.
The rest of the asset class returns were core-plus fixed income, at a net -11.6%; global smart beta equity, -12%; domestic equities, -12.1%; public credit, -14.9%; and international equities, -19.8%. Benchmark returns were not provided.
The pension fund's target allocation is 24.5% core-plus fixed income, 22% domestic equities, 17.5% international equities, 13% private equity, 8% private real assets, 6% global smart beta equity, 4% each private credit and public credit and 1% cash.
