South Dakota’s employee pension plan outperformed the market for fiscal year 2014. Rob Wylie is the Executive Director of the South Dakota Retirement System. He says investments for the pension plan generated a return of 18.9% after fees. Last year the average return of the S&P 500 was 13.69%. Wylie says the South Dakota Retirement System is fully funded. He says this is rare occurrence compared with other states.
"It is a wonderful position to be in and only a few of us around the country, of statewide plans, have that position," says Wylie, "There are probably six or seven plans that are in the 90s and mid 90s and only two of us, of a very large number, that are actually over 100% funded right now."
Wiley says South Dakota’s retirement investments generated an extra 1 billion dollars in funding last year.