El Paso Firemen & Policemen's Pension Fund

El Paso Firemen & Policemen's Pension Fund

Created in 1920, the El Paso Firemen & Policemen's Pension Fund is a single-employer contributory defined benefit plan for the City of El Paso's uniformed public safety employees. It operates through two divisions — a Policemen's Fund and a Firemen's Fund — both governed by a shared Board of Trustees and administrative staff. Executive Director and CIO Tyler Grossman runs day-to-day investment operations, with Ashley Tierney as CFO and Christina Ramirez as Deputy Executive Director. The fund allocates across private credit, buyout strategies, and global real estate securities. Known manager relationships include commitments to Silver Point Capital, a private credit specialist, and Duff & Phelps Global Real Estate Securities Fund, reflecting a tilt toward income-generating and value-oriented alternative assets. Its investment posture is shaped by the demographic demands of a mature pension plan — balancing current benefit payouts with long-duration return-seeking assets. The fund participates primarily through fund commitments rather than direct co-investments, consistent with the governance constraints of a municipal pension system serving fire and police beneficiaries in a mid-sized Texas city. Like many Texas public pension funds, the El Paso Firemen & Policemen's Pension Fund is active in state-level advocacy through TEXPERS, the Texas Association of Public Employee Retirement Systems, and nationally through NCPERS, the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems. These memberships provide peer benchmarking, legislative coordination, and fiduciary education for a lean in-house team operating without a large dedicated investment staff. The fund's board includes representatives of both police and fire unions alongside city appointees, creating a governance dynamic where labor interests, municipal budget constraints, and actuarial funding ratios all shape investment policy. The fund's structural differentiator is its narrow participant base — it serves only uniformed public safety workers, not general city employees. That concentrated liability profile means mortality assumptions, disability claims, and retirement age patterns differ from broader municipal plans, influencing the liquidity and duration requirements of the portfolio. Unlike larger Texas systems such as the Teacher Retirement System or Texas Municipal Retirement System, this fund operates as a standalone entity for a single city's police and fire workforce, giving it both direct accountability to local stakeholders and limited economies of scale in manager selection.