Maryland Teachers & State Employees' Supplemental Retirement Plans

Maryland Teachers & State Employees' Supplemental Retirement Plans

Maryland Teachers & State Employees' Supplemental Retirement Plans (MSRP) launched in 1975 as the voluntary defined-contribution arm of Maryland's public-benefits framework. For decades it carried the word "Teachers" in its name, but on July 1, 2025 the agency officially became the Maryland State Employees Supplemental Retirement Plans — a legislative change that trimmed the title to reflect eligibility across all state employees. The nine-member Board of Trustees is chaired by the sitting Maryland State Treasurer, Dereck E. Davis, while day-to-day operations run under Executive Director Ronda Butler Bell. The plan structure offers participants three tax-advantaged savings vehicles: a governmental 457(b) deferred-compensation plan, a 403(b) tax-sheltered annuity, and a 401(k) savings plan. Since July 2023, the Maryland legislature has funded a dollar-for-dollar contribution match and a higher-education student-loan payment match for qualifying members. The agency's investing model is participant-directed, funneling assets through Empower Retirement's recordkeeping platform into a curated lineup of mutual funds, collective trusts, and annuity contracts across public equities, fixed income, target-date funds, and stable-value instruments. The Investment Contract Pool, administered directly by MSRP, posted a 3.54% annualized crediting rate as of June 1, 2026 and functions as the plan's capital-preservation anchor. First-quarter 2026 plan assets stood at $6.1 billion across 63,028 participants, a 3.4% sequential decline from the prior quarter. The agency operates from a single office in Baltimore and carries no disclosed dedicated investment staff, relying instead on Empower for platform administration and a Board of Trustees for oversight. MSRP holds membership in the National Association of Government Defined Contribution Administrators, placing it within the peer network of state-level deferred-compensation plan sponsors. Structurally, MSRP is not a fiduciarily-independent allocator that selects alternatives or negotiates direct co-investments — it is a public-agency plan sponsor with a participant-directed architecture. The Board of Trustees operates under Maryland statute, with the State Treasurer as Chair and the Department of Budget and Management as a business partner. That governance arrangement means investment-menu design, fee negotiation, and recordkeeping oversight sit inside a state-agency procurement framework rather than a private-investment-committee model. May 2025: Governor Moore signed Senate Bill 200, officially renaming the agency to Maryland State Employees Supplemental Retirement Plans, effective July 1, 2025.