Are you planning to retire in the near future? Don’t wait until the last minute to prepare.

Check out these helpful resources from PERS to get ready:

• Review PERS’ Tier One/Tier Two steps to retire webpage and follow the instructions.
• Attend an education session, which are available to you throughout your career.
• Schedule a retirement application assistance session (RAAS) for a date within the 90 days before your PERS retirement date.
• Get a written benefit estimate when you are within 24 months of being eligible to retire; the form to request a written estimate is available online. You also can create estimates online earlier through your Online Member Services (OMS) account.

Also, keep the following important points in mind:

• Retirement applications may be submitted to PERS up to 90 days before your planned retirement day.
• It can take up to 92 days from your retirement date (not the date of your application submission) for your first pension benefit to be paid.
• Once PERS receives your application, we will review your account information and reconcile data with your employer(s) as needed. This process can sometimes result in a final benefit amount that differs from benefit estimates you received earlier. Remember that benefit estimates are just that — estimates.
• Filling out your application correctly, checking your personal information in OMS or on your member annual statement, requesting benefit estimates, and responding to requests from PERS for additional information can help you avoid delays in the processing of your application. If you are working for a PERS-participating employer and find errors in your personal/account information, contact your employer for corrections. If you are not working for a PERS-participating employer, read the inactive member section on our Change your address webpage for instructions.
• Individual Account Program (IAP) retirement benefits can typically take from 90 to 120 days to process and complete payments or rollovers. Processing is done both by PERS and Voya, which administers IAPs for PERS.
• If you are purchasing time, contact PERS to make sure your payment was received — whether you mailed a check or used a trustee-to-trustee transfer to make the purchase.

If you have questions, contact Member Services for assistance.

Thank you for the more than 8,800 responses to our 2024 member satisfaction survey. Your feedback will help us to improve our services and how we assist you.

Full analysis will be presented to the PERS Board in October. Members can attend board meetings in person or via webinar. Audio recordings of the meetings are subsequently posted on the PERS Board information webpage.

If you missed this year’s survey, don’t worry. You can share your feedback with PERS at any time.

If you wish to change the target-date fund (TDF) in which your Individual Account Program (IAP) account is invested, the option to change it online is coming up next month.

Each September, members can use Online Member Services to make Member Choice elections to change their TDFs. The OMS tool will only be available from September 1 through September 30.

If you choose to change your TDF, this change will not go into effect until January 2025 and will not be reflected on your member annual statement until spring 2026 because of the timing of the cut-off date for member information that goes into the statements.

You can change your TDF only once per calendar year. Your choice will remain in effect unless you make a new election during a subsequent year’s election window.

Find full information about Member Choice on the IAP target-date funds​ webpage.

Target-date fund shift

Effective January 1, 2025, a new TDF will be added for younger public employees: the 2070 Target-Date Fund. At the same time, the most mature of the TDFs — the 2025 Target-Date Fund — will move into the Retirement Allocation Fund.

These shifts are part of a regular process that began in 2020. Every five years, the funds will shift.

Shifting the TDFs helps to keep the IAP's age-based investment strategy effective by creating a fund for younger workers entering the PERS system and moving the TDF of employees near retirement into a fund with less volatile investments.

Are you preparing to retire soon? Filling out forms to name your beneficiaries? Filling out other forms that require your signature?

PERS can accept only the handwritten signatures of members, beneficiaries, or alternate payees on forms — unless the forms have been notarized. If a form contains a digital or electronic signature that has been notarized electronically, staff can accept all uses of the same signature that appear within the notarized document.

Electronic signatures are copies of your actual handwritten signature, such as you might create by signing with a mouse or stylus on a computer or tablet screen or on a trackpad.

Digital signatures are just your name typed in a cursive font and not reproductions of your actual signature. PERS does not accept digital signatures on any forms.

Forms received with digital signatures will be rejected and could delay retirement applications. 

If you’re in the process of retiring and plan to work after retirement for a PERS-participating employer, you need to tell your future employer the following two things:

• What your effective retirement date is.
• That your retirement application is in process with PERS.

Failure to provide this information to your future employer could cause you to be incorrectly hired after retirement as a regular employee rather than as a retired temporary employee. Errors of this kind can negatively impact your retirement benefits, such as delaying payments.

Future employers who need to be notified include any PERS-participating employer you plan to work for after retirement — even your current employer, if you intend to work for them as a retired temporary employee.

If you have questions, contact Member Services for assistance.

By Kevin Olineck
PERS Director

Did you know that PERS has about 900 employers participating in the pension system?

These employers include about 100 state agencies as well as cities, towns, counties, school districts, charter schools, irrigation districts, fire districts, universities, and colleges. This collection of public sector employers across our state makes PERS a multiemployer pension plan.

What does that mean for you as a member?

A key advantage of a multiemployer plan is that your pension benefits can go with you as you change jobs and advance in your career — provided that you stay with employers who participate in PERS. 

If you currently work for one of PERS’ 900 employers, you can take a job with any other PERS-participating employer without worrying about what may happen to your pension. Your PERS membership will move with you between PERS-participating employers. We will combine your service from your old and new jobs, and your service credit will continue to accumulate.

In my mind, this is a great tool to attract potential new employees and to retain you as a public employee. Retention of public employees further benefits PERS-participating employers because it keeps a well-trained workforce in place to serve Oregonians.

To learn more about PERS-participating employers, check out PERS by the Numbers, where we list all employers by county.

Read on for additional information to consider if you are thinking of changing jobs.

Withdrawal of your benefits

If you stop working for PERS-participating employers and withdraw your PERS funds, you will lose any service credit you acquired while working in PERS-qualifying jobs. Service credit is one of the factors used to calculate how much you will be paid in monthly pension benefits at retirement. If you withdraw, you will have to reestablish PERS membership when you start any new PERS-qualifying job.

If your account has not yet vested and you change jobs, you can have up to a five-year gap between PERS-qualifying jobs and still retain your previous service credit, so long as you do not withdraw your account. Check your last member annual statement (sent in May) to see your vesting status.

Note: As a Tier One or Tier Two member, if you withdraw, you will not only forfeit your service time but your Tier One or Tier Two membership as well.

Loss of membership

As a PERS member, you have two parts to your PERS retirement*: a pension and an Individual Account Program (IAP) account. 

If you have a gap in PERS-qualifying employment that’s longer than five years and you are not vested, you will lose your PERS membership and any service credit you acquired toward your pension. Any funds you have in your IAP, however, remain yours.

To be vested, you must work in a PERS-qualifying position for 600 hours per year for five calendar years (these do not need to be consecutive) or must have reached normal retirement age.

If you lose your membership and you are subsequently reemployed by a PERS-participating employer, you will start over in PERS, acquiring service credit from the date you start your new job. Any service credit you had before your loss of membership will not be applied toward vesting.

If you lost membership, did not withdraw your IAP, and subsequently start a new PERS-qualifying job, IAP contributions from your new job will be added to your existing IAP account. In other words, you will have one IAP account that contains old and new contributions. You will not have multiple IAP accounts.

*Read about the Employee Pension Stability Account and how it relates to PERS pension benefits.