Want to know what CalPERS does with your pension contributions? You can easily find out by browsing our website, watching a board meeting, or reading our blog posts.
In recognition of National Sunshine Week, which celebrates the public’s right to know, we are sharing details of our commitment to disclosure—a commitment that has earned us recognition as the most transparent pension fund in the United States and one of the most open in the world.
Transparency means disclosing our investments, our administrative costs and how much we pay in fees, and how they’re performing. CEO Marcie Frost has prioritized increasing public disclosures since she arrived a decade ago.
“Our financial performance and transparency scores have improved tremendously over the last five years,” said Lisa Middleton, a governor appointee on the CalPERS Board of Administration and a former mayor of Palm Springs.
Leading the Nation
CalPERS has been recognized as the most transparent pension fund in the U.S. for more than four years by the CEM Global Pension Transparency Benchmark, which ranks the largest pension organizations in 15 countries on how much information they share with the public. We also ranked as the fourth most transparent pension system in the world in 2025.
“We share quite a bit more than other institutions,” said Anton Orlich, CalPERS Managing Investment Director of Private Equity.
Strong Investment Returns Boost Fund
CalPERS runs the largest defined-benefit public pension system in the United States, overseeing and investing more than $600 billon on behalf of 2.4 million members. Having a defined benefit means you receive lifetime pension payments.
CalPERS has been paying pensions to Californians for more than 90 years.
The fund earned an 11.6% return on its investment dollars in fiscal year 2024-25. These earnings helped boost the system’s funding level—also known as the funded status—to nearly 84% in December 2025, up from 79% at the end of fiscal year 2024-25 and 74% the year before that.
The funded status is calculated by subtracting all present and future pension payments from the value of the fund. The average pension system in the United States has a funded status of between 75% and 80%.
Public Decision Making
In addition to publicly sharing information about investment performance, CalPERS employs an independent auditor to review its internal and external financial controls and report the findings to the Board of Administration. Team members also regularly present details of planned investment decisions to the board and its committees. These quarterly meetings are live streamed for the public through a webcast, with meeting archives available on our YouTube channel.
You can also find detailed reports on the CalPERS website that disclose investment holdings, performance, and fees paid to investment managers. When it comes to investments in private companies, we disclose the investment managers we have partnered with, any fees we pay them, and their investment performance. This is the standard practice in the private markets.
Private equity is one of our highest-performing asset classes and earned a 14.3% return in the recent 12-month period ending June 30, 2025.
We select private equity investment partners carefully to make sure they can deliver performance for the portfolio while adhering to our governance and standards for human capital management.
“I’m very proud of CalPERS,” said Board Member Ramón Rubalcava. “I think they are up at the frontier as far as creating new levels of governance and also fiduciary responsibility to make sure that the benefits are there for the members.”
Ongoing Disclosure Push
CEO Frost says CalPERS will continue its drive to be a leader in disclosing information to the public. “Our goal, as always, is to deliver the best possible returns for the fund, and also to continue our work on transparency,” she said.
You’ll find examples of some of the reports, webpages, and databases we’ve developed below. We encourage you to take a look—after all, it’s your money.
1. Transparency Report
This report (PDF) provides an overview of our financial position and offers a snapshot of CalPERS for the fiscal year. It simplifies and consolidates complex information otherwise only found in extensive reports like the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR), the Funding Levels and Risks Report, and the Health Benefits Program Annual Report.
2. Annual Investment Report
This nearly 500-page Annual Investment Report (PDF) includes information about each investment’s value and the number of shares CalPERS owns.
3. Annual Comprehensive Financial Report
The Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (PDF) provides information about CalPERS’ finances, such as the fees we pay to money managers.
4. Private Equity Program Fund Performance Review
Private equity is one of our highest-performing asset classes and earned a 14.3% return in the recent 12-month period ending June 30, 2025. Our Private Equity Program Fund Performance Review database lists private equity investments, the funds we’ve committed to an investment, and how much they’ve earned.
5. Annual Trust Level Review
The annual Trust Level Review (PDF) provides an in-depth look into our investment earnings, Investment Office initiatives, and our views on the state of the market.
6. CalPERS Proxy Voting Webpage
CalPERS owns shares in major public companies in the U.S. and abroad. Our Proxy Voting page details how we’re voting on the most pressing corporate issues of the day.
7. Public Records Act Requests
The California Public Records Act, passed by the California Legislature in 1968, requires that government agency records be disclosed to the public, upon request, unless there are privacy and/or public safety exemptions which would prevent doing so.
In 2025, our Public Records Act (PRA) team received 448 such requests and closed out 444.