OP&F investment performance continues to shine, despite volatile first quarter in 2025

The Ohio Police & Fire Pension Fund’s (OP&F) investment performance for the quarter ending March 31, 2025, ranked in the top one percent of 544 public pension plans throughout the U.S. as measured by Investment Metrics, an industry leading provider of performance analytics.

The quarter, which saw the S&P 500 index decline by more than 4.0 percent, marked a difficult period for many pension plans where the median gross of fee return among the 544 plans was 0.17 percent. According to Wilshire Associates, OP&F’s independent investment consultant, OP&F’s gross of fee return of 3.37 percent for the quarter outperformed this median return by more than 3.0 percent.

OP&F’s strong performance was not only notable during the quarter but also over longer periods, ranking in the top one percent for the trailing one-year, top nine percent over five years, and top seven percent over ten years where 447 funds were measured. Over the trailing 10 years, OP&F outperformed 93 percent of the other funds in the universe while experiencing less volatility in its returns than 76 percent of those same funds.

“OP&F’s exceptional performance can be attributed to excellent stewardship by our Board of Trustees, and also to our investment strategy in which investment risk is intentionally allocated in a more balanced manner than what is typical among public pension systems.” said Mary Beth Foley, OP&F Executive Director.

OP&F’s long term asset allocation strategy provides for drivers of risk to be uniquely spread across not only growth-oriented assets, but also inflation-oriented assets and defensive assets. This balance has helped to mitigate OPF’s absolute risk and enabled it to be less reliant on traditional growth-oriented investments without sacrificing returns.

As of June 17, OP&F’s investment portfolio is valued at $19.5 billion.

Independent auditor gives OP&F a clean opinion

In addition to the investment performance, the annual independent financial audit of OP&F resulted in an unmodified opinion of OP&F’s financial statements for 2024. An unmodified opinion means that the financial statements provided to the auditing firm present fairly the financial position of the pension fund. The independent firm conducting the audit, Crowe, reported the findings to the OP&F Board of Trustees on June 17.

Posted 6/18/2025