PRB outlines MET compliance project, proposes portal changes to streamline trustee training reporting

The Pension Review Board received a staff briefing on Jan. 12 about a project aimed at improving compliance with the Mandatory Education and Training (MET) rules for trustees and administrators.

Ashley Rendon, deputy director, summarized recent rule changes and the agency’s plan to modernize reporting: "The portal updates will allow the information to be directly entered into the fields of the dashboard... it will provide more prompt information on compliance systems through their dashboard as well." Rendon said the changes should reduce staff data‑entry time and make compliance status visible to system administrators.

Rendon reviewed the background: the PRB moved trustee training cycles to the calendar year, requires seven core credit hours in a trustee’s first year and two hours of continuing education annually thereafter. Staff identified report‑management burdens—systems currently upload PDFs, and PRB staff then manually enter the data. The portal changes would let administrators input training directly and receive dashboard feedback on whether submissions are acceptable.

Staff said the project will include stakeholder meetings (planned for March), an initial recommendations presentation to the education committee in spring, a first draft circulated to stakeholders after that meeting, and a final presentation to the full board in July. The board urged that outreach emphasize trustees’ fiduciary responsibilities as part of the compliance messaging.

Next steps: staff will schedule stakeholder outreach in March, produce draft recommendations for the education committee and include potential statutory recommendations in the PRB’s biennial report if stakeholders recommend them.

Quotes in this article come from Ashley Rendon and board members at the Jan. 12 PRB meeting.