Updated September 3, 2026. Quick answer: Indiana Public Employees’ Retirement Fund (PERF): the COLA is discretionary (the General Assembly must approve any increase), service credit can be purchased, and no DROP was found for PERF specifically. Vesting takes 10 years of PERF and/or TRF-covered service (8 for specified elected positions); the defined-contribution component vests immediately.
Provisional. This page is published at medium confidence. The specific points that could not be confirmed are listed under What could not be verified below, and are named rather than smoothed over.
The verdicts
| Is the COLA granted? | Discretionary (General Assembly must approve) |
|---|---|
| Is the COLA compounded? | Not stated |
| Vesting | 10 years of PERF/TRF-covered service |
| Buy service credit? | Yes |
| DROP? | None found for PERF specifically |
| State | Indiana |
Those first two rows are separate questions and are routinely confused. Whether you get an increase at all is one thing; whether it compounds is another. A system can grant an increase automatically every year and still compute it against your original benefit forever, which is a materially worse deal than it sounds.
The COLA
“Any Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) must first be approved by the Indiana General Assembly.” A newer law prefunds a narrower structure going forward: HEA 1221 “modified the effective date… to actuarially prefund annual 13th checks for PERF, TRF ’96, and EG&C members who retire before July 1, 2029, and annual 1% COLAs for members… who retire on or after July 1, 2029… This is not a guarantee of future 13th checks or future COLAs that the General Assembly has not yet granted.”
Buying service credit
Service-purchase provisions such as an Air-Time additional-service purchase were not found in the PERF Hybrid at-a-glance sheet or the 13th-check/COLA bulletin reviewed for this system; readers should confirm purchase-of-service options directly with INPRS.
Run your own numbers before deciding: some purchases never recover their cost, and the calculator shows which.
Coordinate this with your overall retirement plan
An adviser can help weigh a COLA that may not compound, a service-credit purchase that may never pay for itself, or a DROP election against the rest of your retirement plan, but that does not replace the numbers in your own member statement.
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Vesting
According to INPRS’s PERF Hybrid at-a-glance sheet, the Defined Benefit component vests after 10 years of PERF and/or TRF-covered service (8 years for specified elected positions), while the Defined Contribution component vests immediately.
DROP
INPRS does administer a program it calls DROP, but every source found ties it specifically to the 1977 Police Officers’ & Firefighters’ Pension & Disability Fund and the Excise, Gaming, and Conservation Officers’ Retirement Fund, not to PERF. No PERF-specific DROP reference was found in the PERF Hybrid at-a-glance sheet or handbook pages reviewed. Readers in PERF should not assume INPRS’s DROP applies to them.
DROP is rarer than it appears across the systems on this site: most have none.
What could not be verified
REFUND TERMS: this page does not state what happens to your contributions if you take a refund instead of leaving your account with the system: that comparison was not independently researched for this system this session, and is left as an open gap rather than guessed from another system’s rule. Consult your own plan’s refund/forfeiture terms before deciding. Any additional field marked “not stated” in the verdicts table above was genuinely absent from the official materials read, not omitted for space.
Sources
Read September 3, 2026.
Related public pension systems: Indiana TRF · Kentucky KTRS.
General information drawn from each system’s own official published materials, not legal, tax or financial advice. Vesting, COLA and buyback rules are set by state statute and plan tier, differ materially by hire date, and can change by future legislation. This page cannot see your own member statement, which governs. We are not a law firm, a tax adviser, or a fiduciary, and this is not personalized advice.