University of California Retirement System (UCRS)

Description

The University of California Retirement System (UCRS) contains master demographic data for all individuals associated with the retirement system. Depending on an individual's status, i.e., whether he/she is an active UCRS member, a dependent, an annuitant, etc., additional information about the individual is maintained. A staff of about twelve programmers maintains UCRS, making constant changes and upgrades to the system.

UCRS is composed of three main subsystems:

Annuitant System. The Annuitant System handles payments to University of California Retirement Plan (UCRP) retirees, disabled members, survivors, and beneficiaries. This includes producing monthly checks and transmitting electronic payments to banks for posting to individual accounts. As part of this service, the Annuitant System handles the annual Cost of Living (COLA) adjustment processing, COLA guarantees for Social Security and UCRS payments, and tax reporting.

Insurance System. The Insurance System maintains records of enrollment in medical, dental, and legal insurance for eligible retired or disabled members (including UCRP members, PERS members, and the small number of members in other retirement systems) and survivors; it calculates retirees' deductions from annuity payments; and it transmits eligibility information to the insurance carriers.

Membership System. The Membership System has three subsystems, which are described below: the Core System, the DEPcare System and the Loan System.

The Core System serves as the standard recordkeeping system for the UCRP, the Defined Contribution Plan, and the 403(b) Plan. It thus records member contributions; posts interest or gain/loss; processes systematic (regular) and nonperiodic withdrawals (including tax reporting); and handles transfers between six internally managed funds. These funds are the Savings Fund, the ICC Fund, the Money Market Fund, the Equity Fund, the Bond Fund, and the Multi-Asset Fund. The Core System also translates time worked and salary components into service credit and covered compensation data for UCRP and produces data used for semi-annual statements for UCRP members and all Defined Contribution Plan and 403(b) Plan participants.

The DEPcare System handles claims processing for individuals with DEPcare accounts and produces year-end letters indicating the amount that remains to be used or defaulted in each account.

The Loan System handles loans made to active UCRP members with 403(b) balances. This includes an interactive voice response (IVR) based application process; initial loan funding; posting the interest, principal, administrative fees, and repayment portions; and dealing with other aspects of loan administration such as prepayments, delinquent payments, curtailments, and adjustments.

UCRS data is processed primarily by CICS and batch processes. Posting of contribution and service data is performed monthly by way of an interface file that is received from each campus payroll location. In addition to CICS, data is entered by way of IVR, Web, and client-server systems. The Membership System produces distribution and loan checks twice monthly and the Annuitant System produces retirement checks monthly.

Hundreds of reports are produced on a daily, monthly, and annual basis. IR&C provides these reports online for user's viewing by way of an electronic report distribution product called View Direct.

Access

There are several modes of system access:
• CICS - Used by the UCOP Benefits Office and campus benefit representatives to inquire and (depending on level of access) update the system data
• Batch Processes - Used to process campus payroll input data, produce checks and reports
• IVR - The interactive voice response system is used by employees, annuitants, etc., to access, and in some instances, request changes to their personal data
• Web - Similar to the IVR, Web applications enable employees, annuitants, etc., to access and request changes. Web applications also exist for internal (i.e., the UCOP Benefits office) and campus use
• Client-Server - Desktop applications used by the Benefits office

Technical Information

The UCRS system, taken as a whole, utilizes a variety of technologies. The mainframe processes, i.e., the CICS and batch, run on OS/390 and are coded in COBOL/DB2. The Web and IVR portions run on an NT platform using Edify software and use both DB2 and Sybase data. Client-server applications run on Windows desktops, accessing data on DB2 and Sybase.