Whom We Serve

Insurance Coverage

The Texas Employees Group Benefits Program (GBP) offers the following insurance coverage for employees, retirees and (through COBRA) former employees of state agencies and higher education institutions (except the Texas A&M University and University of Texas systems), and their eligible family members.

  • Health
  • Life 
  • Dental
  • Vision
  • Accidental death & dismemberment (AD&D)
  • Short-term and long-term disability

GBP health insurance plans cover about one of every 53 Texans. Plan participants share health costs through dependent premium contributions, copays, coinsurance, prescription and/or medical deductibles and other means. In addition to designing health plans in which the state and participants share costs, ERS strives to keep administrative expenses low. In HealthSelect of Texas®, by far the largest GBP health plan, only about 3% of overall expenditures go toward administration. The plan’s average monthly administrative expenses are less than half of the average for large, private-sector health plans.

  • Almost 550,000 participants 
  • The self-funded health plans—the HealthSelect of Texas medical plans, the HealthSelectSM Prescription Drug Program and HealthSelectSM Medicare Rx – paid more than $3 billion in claims.
  • Participants in those plans paid almost $1 billion in out-of-pocket expenses, including copays, coinsurance and deductibles.

State of Texas Retirement

Employees Retirement System of Texas plans provide retirement benefits for state agency employees and elected officials (ERS fund), law enforcement and custodial officers (LECOSRF), and judges (JRS 1 and JRS 2). They are designed to provide a reasonable and stable source of income for retirees at a low cost to the state.

  • About 118,000 retirees and beneficiaries (in all plans)
  • About 142,000 contributing members (in all plans)
  • 135,000 non-contributing members (in all plans)
  • $29 billion trust fund

Texa$aver 401(k) / 457 Program

Texa$aver allows employees of state agencies and participating higher education institutions to increase their retirement savings with voluntary pre-tax or post-tax (Roth) contributions to 401(k) and/or 457 accounts directly from their paychecks. The program offers lower-than-average fees, a wide variety of investment options and the opportunity to consult with investment advisors.

The program has almost $4 billion in total assets, across a total of almost 256,000 accounts.

TexFlex

These flexible spending accounts help state agency and institution employees save money on their federal taxes by deducting pre-tax dollars from their paychecks and depositing them in accounts they can use for health, dependent “day” care and commuting expenses. Employees contributed a total of about $70 million to more than 46,000 health care, limited-purpose, dependent care and commuter accounts.

Because of their pre-tax contributions to TexFlex as well as pre-tax insurance premium payments, employees saved more than $130 million in FICA and federal income taxes. The state saved more than $44 million in FICA taxes.

All numbers are for Fiscal Year 2020. For more information from FY20, please see ERS at a Glance or other ERS reports. 

For profiles of how ERS members and retirees use their benefits, , visit the Your Benefits, Your Story page.