SFERS · San Francisco City & County Employees' Retirement System · $39.6B
San Francisco has two 65% limits, and the one on the dashboard is not the one in the policy
The board caps anything taking more than twelve months to convert to cash at under 65% of the fund, and names no asset class doing it. Staff separately run warning levels at 55%, 60% and 65% on private investments, which is a narrower measure. In February 2025 private investments were 51% of the fund, while only 43% of the fund could be sold inside a year. The dashboard showed fourteen points of room. The policy had about eight.
Key numbers, and what they mean
Under 65%
The board-approved limit, written as time to full redemption of more than twelve months rather than as an asset label. It names nothing, so it catches semi-liquid and evergreen vehicles automatically.
20 / 25 / 35
The floors underneath, as cumulative percentages of the fund convertible within one month, three months and twelve months. A ceiling on illiquidity and a floor on liquidity are two different rules, and it has both.
43%
Of the fund convertible to cash within twelve months at 21 February 2025, a preliminary custodian figure. The other 57% is what the cap actually measures. SFERS does not print that number anywhere.
51% vs 57%
Private investments against everything taking longer than a year. The gap is the part of absolute return whose redemption terms run past twelve months. Only the first figure appears on the warning chart.
Asset mix, October 2025
Public equity30.6%
Private equity26.0%
Real assets13.0%
Public credit and Treasuries10.0%
Absolute return9.4%
Private credit8.6%
Cash2.4%
Adding its published private equity, real assets and private credit weights gives 47.6% at 31 October 2025, against a 40% target. SFERS publishes the components, not that total. Public credit and Treasuries are combined here.
The read-through
From the report
Takeaway: how to apply it to a portfolio
The board limit is on assets taking more than twelve months to redeem, at under 65% of the fund. The staff warning levels at 55%, 60% and 65% are labelled on private investments. Two measures, one number.
Check that your monitoring measures the same thing your limit does. Here the policy counts time to cash and the dashboard counts asset labels, so the wider measure sits roughly six points above the narrower one and the dashboard flatters the room you have. Both are sensible rules. They are not the same rule.
The consultant models the chance of private investments passing 55%, 60% and 65% by 2029 at 17.2%, 4.5% and 0.9%, peaking that year and decaying afterwards.
Put lights on the dashboard well below the wall, and attach a probability to each. A 17% chance of the amber light three years out is something you can act on by slowing commitments, which is what this plan did. A wall you reach without warning is a crisis instead.
Its headline coverage ratio is 2.09 times in the base case. Its modified ratio, which excludes risk assets from the numerator, is 1.21 in the base case, 0.97 in the No Growth scenario and 0.83 in the crisis scenario. Cambridge Associates puts No Growth at a 10% probability and the crisis at 1%.
Run two coverage tests rather than one, and look at where the second one breaks rather than at the worst column. This one goes under 1.0 in a scenario its consultant calls a one-in-ten year, not only in a crisis. The easy question is whether you can meet calls and spending. The one that fails first is whether you can meet them without selling something you did not want to sell.
The Argus lensThis ceiling counts anything the plan cannot convert within twelve months, which is a judgment about redemption terms rather than about asset labels. Working out what a fund's documents actually permit, and how long getting out really takes, is the read we give you.
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About the source
SFERS's annual liquidity management update, presented to its board on 12 March 2025, gives the tier balances, the coverage ratios, the stress scenarios, the warning levels and the modelled probabilities. The under-65% cap and the liquidity floors are from Exhibit 2 of its investment policy statement approved on 12 June 2024, which defines the tiers purely by time to full redemption and assigns no asset class to any of them. The asset mix is from the chief investment officer report to its board on 12 November 2025.