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BENEFITS BEAT
P2F2: Pension Geeks Rule!
A burgeoning conference has the best technical agenda in the pension field.
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Last month I had the pleasure to kick off the sixth annual conference of a blossoming professional association known as P2F2: Public Pension Financial Forum. It's a low-profile, low-budget volunteer-run professional association targeting the technical people who serve public pension funds behind the scenes: accountants, compliance officers, CFOs and other operational personnel.
Readers of this column who are passionate about strong pension fund management and operations should pay close attention to this outfit. Those with sufficient budgets should consider joining and attending its conferences. P2F2 dues and conference fees are bargain-priced. Compared with the other national membership organizations and the commercially run pension symposia, the content of the P2F2 sessions is by far the richest — with serious content for people with a technical bent and day-to-day operational responsibilities.
As a former chief operating officer of one of the nation's largest mutual funds, I felt right at home with this group of techies, as we all speak a common language. The organization is developing a strong national network of professionals who exchange information on a regular basis, and readers would be wise to "plug in" if you have something to share or to learn about the internal workings of public pension funds.
Compared to the commercially operated public pension conferences that are overrun by vendors who "pay to play" and pitch products during their supposedly educational sessions, the P2F2 experience is refreshingly different. The leadership has made a conscious decision to keep overhead low, which means that volunteers run the show. This year's meeting was held at the historic Battle House hotel in Mobile, Alabama, a hidden jewel I'd never been to before. I was charmed by the neighboring joints, the native hospitality and the facilities (which are owned by the Alabama state retirement systems).
Topics ranged from my high-level overview of the evolution and future of public retirement plans to the latest news from the Governmental Accounting Standards Board; from securities lending practices to performance measurement; from hedge fund risk controls to a myriad of investment, financial, compliance and operational topics. Nobody went home without learning a lot.
The organizers achieved a perfect blend of plenary sessions for all attendees complemented by a three-track concurrent-session format that presented more technical content on pension finance and operations than any conference I have ever attended in my life. Even the group meals and social functions were convivial. Offline conversations were spirited, not the usual humdrum conference patter. Professionals meeting here genuinely appreciate and enjoy each other.
Next year the P2F2 group travels to Sacramento, California, and will visit the headquarters of the two largest public pension plans in America, CalPERs and CalSTRS, where the tours will undoubtedly include back-office operational facilities and not just the fancy boardrooms and granite entryways. With a few hundred — not thousands — attending their conferences, the leaders of P2F2 are hunting out unique and interesting venues for future meetings that will combine moderate-cost hotels and some distinctive local charm that has been lost with the larger professional associations, which conduct meetings in big-city convention centers and corporate-style hotels.
Having worked on staff for a professional association, after heading a state volunteer financial officials' group, I really appreciated the skilled efforts of seasoned veterans to promote networking among the attendees. Nobody left this meeting without making new friends and building a phone list of counterparts in other pension plans. The conference proceedings were provided on data disks and provided rich resources to the attendees upon their return home.
Pension trustees and board members should ask their internal staff if they are monitoring this group's work, and should support their participation in this worthwhile organization. For more information on P2F2, you can visit its Web site. It may be your pension plan's best investment in 2009 — and certainly has the best risk-reward ratio.
Girard Miller, an analyst of benefits and investments with 30 years of experience in the public, private and nonprofit sectors, can be reached at Girardinmalibu@charter.net. His general market observations and institutional investment strategies are his own and should not be construed as investment advice or recommendations concerning specific securities.
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