Department of Employee Trust Funds
December 20, 2010

Stella and Bozarth Featured Guests on "Newsmakers"

Department of Employee Trust Funds (ETF) Secretary Dave Stella and Keith Bozarth, executive director of the State of Wisconsin Investment Board (SWIB), were featured guests in a recent episode of "Newsmakers," a production of Wisconsin Eye.

Following a question-and-answer-style format, host Steve Walters interviewed Stella and Bozarth on a variety of key topics relevant to the Wisconsin Retirement System (WRS), including:

• How the two agencies, with separate and distinct duties and responsibilities, work together to provide benefits to more than 560,000 WRS members.
  
• Challenges faced by each agency over the past three years, including the effects of 2008’s historic market meltdown and the ripple effect it has had on WRS members and employers.
  
• How the system’s funding discipline, “risk-sharing” design, and cost-effective benefit administration and asset management work together to create a fully-funded public pension benefit program.
  
• Future challenges that lie ahead for each agency, including investment staff recruitment and retention, reducing volatility in investments, and, for ETF, implementing and communicating changes in public policy.

Click here to view: Newsmakers: Public Employee Pension System.