University of Missouri Retirement, Disability and Death Benefit Plan

University of Missouri Retirement, Disability and Death Benefit Plan

The University of Missouri Retirement, Disability and Death Benefit Plan was established in 1958 to serve faculty and staff across the UM System's four campuses. Its original defined benefit structure was amended and restated in 1989, then frozen to new participants on October 1, 2019, shifting the plan into a mature, closed-liability phase. Oversight falls to the Office of the Treasurer and the Board of Curators, with day-to-day investment management executed by a compact internal team led by Tom Richards. The plan's trust fund is deployed across a deliberately broad asset mix. Public equities and fixed income form the core, but the portfolio extends into a dedicated real estate allocation managed by Blake Jensen in Columbia, a commodities sleeve, and a Levered Alpha Portfolio that captures hedge fund exposures. While the plan does not publish a comprehensive list of external manager relationships, the presence of a named Director of Real Estate and an explicitly defined Levered Alpha sleeve signals a direct-sourcing capability unusual for a mid-sized state pension. The geographic footprint is concentrated in US markets, with the real estate portfolio centered on the Columbia region. The investment office functions as a team of roughly seven professionals. The retirement plan operates alongside a suite of related UM System financial entities, including a University of Missouri Real Estate Portfolio and the University of Missouri Foundation, which manages philanthropic assets. Tom Richards serves as the plan's CIO, directing asset allocation and external manager selection, while Kevin Hogg oversees treasury and debt management for the broader system (per public record). The plan's structural distinguishing feature is its closed-liability status post-2019. Unlike an open state pension accepting new accruals, this fund must manage a maturing obligation pool with a terminal-service runway, making its Levered Alpha and real-asset deployments a more deliberate liquidity-calibration exercise than a conventional growth mandate. Governance flows through a Board of Curators whose composition—including former St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson and quantitative-finance pioneer Jeanne Cairns Sinquefield—adds a layer of financial and public-administration expertise to the trustee-level oversight.