BU Offers Certification for Pension Fund Administrators

by Alan Hunt

, 1998)
Media contact: Alan Hunt
(254) 710-6271
Alan_Hunt@baylor.edu

Administrators who look after the retirement funds of thousands of public employees from all over the South are going back to school at Baylor University's Hankamer School of Business.
Hankamer's executive education program and the Institute for Public Funds have developed a week-long residency program for the certification of public pension fund administrators and trustees.
The curriculum for administrators provides them with the tools, understanding, and skills to manage and work with actuaries, accountants, investment consultants and money managers, said Phil Sanchez, director of the Waco Executive MBA program. The chartered trustee program is designed to assist and qualify trustees in serving their plans and plan beneficiaries.
All program participants are required to take a four-hour examination at the end of the seminar. Administrators receive a certificate designating them as a certified public pension administrator (CPPA). Trustees receive a chartered trustee certificate (CT).
Sanchez said Baylor has contracted with the Houston-based Institute for Public Funds to provide eight programs annually through the year 2003.
Investment consultant Michael Bunn of Arthur Andersen & Co., who was also involved in the curriculum, said Baylor was selected for the program because of the "quality education offered here and because of Baylor's national reputation."
Baylor professors and industry professionals are providing content and instruction for the seminars. Participants at the first program included administrators from pension systems representing police officers, firefighters, municipal employees, and transit authority workers in Texas, Tennessee and Oklahoma. The next certification seminar, scheduled to start Oct. 20, will be for public pension fund trustees.
For more information, contact Sanchez at (254) 710-6212.