RALEIGH — The North Carolina State Treasurer’s office, led by Treasurer Brad Briner, announced several developments related to the state’s retirement savings, investment management and State Health Plan.
The updates include milestones for supplemental retirement plans, strategic changes at the newly formed North Carolina Investment Authority (NCIA), performance data for the state’s pension fund, and the inaugural meeting of a medical advisory committee for the State Health Plan.
The North Carolina Supplemental Retirement Plans (SRP), comprising the NC 401(k) Plan and NC 457 Plan, reached a record $20 billion in assets at the end of 2025. The figure represents an increase from $17.7 billion at the close of 2024, with assets more than doubling over the past seven years, according to a press release.
“Today marks an important day in Supplemental Retirement Plans history. It’s obviously a testament to the hardworking men and women of North Carolina and their commitment to being retirement ready in their savings, but it’s also a compliment to the team,” Briner said, acknowledging the leadership of SRP Director Jeff Hancock.
The retirement plans serve 325,714 participants across more than 1,100 state employers.
“It’s not enough to get to $20 billion,” Briner said. “We have aspirations to go even further, and the way we do that is by making it a better and better plan.”
Related news included North Carolina’s pension fund achieving a 13% return in 2025, excluding fees, ranking the fund in the 54th percentile among large U.S. public funds with more than $20 billion in assets.
Equity holdings of $60.5 billion returned 21%, fixed income 7.4%, private equity 5.8%, and noncore real estate declined 1.7%. Over three years, the fund averaged 10.2% annually, but 5.6% over five years, below the 6.5% target and peer averages.
At the Supplemental Retirement Board of Trustees’ quarterly meeting Feb. 26, the board approved an extension of an administrative fee waiver, known as a fee holiday. The measure is estimated to save participants approximately $1.7 million in recordkeeping costs over the next year, equating to about 10 cents per $1,000 held in accounts.
The waiver, which was effective March 1, is funded by accumulated reserves from prior fee negotiations with vendors. The board also voted to reduce reserves by an additional $2.25 million, continuing a pattern from previous years when similar waivers were implemented.
Additionally, the board unanimously approved updates to the GoalMaker asset allocation tool used by participants. The meeting also included presentations from UHY on an upcoming financial audit, from CEM Benchmarking on cost-effectiveness comparisons and from Empower on enrollment data, as well as from the Bank of New York Mellon on artificial intelligence applications.
In a separate meeting Feb. 25, the NCIA Board of Directors approved a new strategic asset allocation for the North Carolina Retirement Systems (NCRS) and voted to establish a long-term strategy for investing assets of the Ancillary Governmental Participants Investment Program (AGPIP).
“These were the final steps in the construction of North Carolina’s newest state agency, the North Carolina Investment Authority,” Briner said in a press release. “We now have approved the Investment Policy Statement and the incentive compensation plan.”
NCIA, established under the 2025 State Investment Modernization Act, manages $208.23 billion in assets as of Dec. 31, 2025, including $141.5 billion in the state pension plan.
“NCIA’s sole purpose is to deliver superior, risk-adjusted investment returns on the over $200 billion of taxpayer, employee, and retiree assets we manage on behalf of all North Carolinians,” said Briner. “These two important actions will allow the team to do just that.
“If the team increases historical returns by just 1% a year, the state will soon be able to increase retiree payouts through COLAs while at the same time reducing the annual pension contribution cost to the state budget.”
The allocation provides flexibility in asset classes such as public equity, fixed income, private equity, real estate and hedge funds, with new performance benchmarks and risk controls. It also covers the AGPIP, which includes 78 entities with statutorily limited investment options.
The NCIA Board also approved an incentive compensation plan for NCIA staff, based on recommendations from Mercer. Awards are tied to exceeding the 6.5% return assumption and other criteria.
