Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB)

The five Presidentially appointed board members set policy and selection criteria for the index-based investment menus; Chairman Michael F. Gerber leads that board. Day-to-day administration and contracting with the external recordkeeper are led by Executive Director Ravindra Deo. The board chooses the market indices the plan tracks and oversees the mutual-fund window added in 2022, but it exercises no security-level discretion — the TSP runs on statutory indexing rules, not manager intuition.

No. The Thrift Savings Plan is restricted by statute to a set of core index funds covering US equities, international developed-market stocks, fixed income, and government securities. The 2022 mutual-fund window expanded participant choice into externally managed public-market funds, but the board has never sought — and would need legislative approval to pursue — private-asset exposure.

The TSP is a defined-contribution plan, not a defined-benefit pension. Federal employees and uniformed service members own their individual balances directly, and the board's only obligation is to run the plan's investment options and recordkeeping infrastructure efficiently. There is no pension formula, no actuarial return target, and no collective investment pool generating obligations for future taxpayers.

The Employee Thrift Advisory Council is a 15-member body created by statute to represent the interests of federal workers, postal employees, and uniformed services members. It reviews board policies and transmits participant concerns, ensuring that the unionized federal workforce has a formal voice in TSP governance without diluting fiduciary responsibility, which stays with the board.

Assets build entirely from payroll contributions — mandatory and elective — automatically withheld from the salaries of federal civilian employees and members of the uniformed services. The plan also captures agency matching contributions and earnings on those amounts. No external fundraising, endowment draw, or tax-revenue appropriation fills the corpus.