Welcome to the Optional Retirement Plan

Established in 1990 by the Mississippi Legislature, the Optional Retirement Plan (ORP), a defined contribution plan, is made available to eligible institutions of higher learning teaching and administrative faculty. A new employee is afforded the opportunity to choose to participate in ORP within 30 days of employment. If he or she does not elect to participate, he or she is automatically enrolled in the Public Employees’ Retirement System of Mississippi (PERS), a defined benefit plan.

Having ORP serves as a recruiting tool to better enable Mississippi to attract qualified and talented university staff who might already be participating in a similar defined contribution plan in another state. This alternative plan is structured so as to be portable and transferable to accommodate teaching and administrative faculty who move from one state to another throughout their careers.

The employee and employer make the same contributions, based on percentage of salary, as would otherwise be made to PERS. However, 2.50 percent of the employer contribution is paid to PERS to offset the unfunded accrued liability that would otherwise have been paid by the employer had the ORP participant opted for PERS. The remaining employer contributions plus the employee contributions are credited to the participant’s account and invested as directed by the participant in one or more of the authorized ORP investment vehicles.

For more information about ORP, visit the Coverage page. To read about the differences between ORP and PERS, visit the Comparing ORP and PERS page.