Inside the State Treasurer’s Office

“Ken Simpler refocused and modernized state government’s investment portfolio, making it more efficient and producing greater returns. He streamlined and improved the system for state employee retirement plans, making them more cost-effective and improving services. Simpler has concrete ideas for more wisely managing state government’s debt and streamlining the labyrinthine, obsolete system by which Delaware does its banking.” –  News Journal Editorial Board Endorsement

A Finance Guy For A Finance Job

Ken applied lessons from his 20-year career as a finance professional to reform some of the core fiscal operations inside the Treasurer’s Office. Those day-to-day operations included managing the State’s cash and debt, arranging banking services and processing financial transactions for state agencies, and overseeing investment plans for individuals saving for retirement, planning for college and managing disability expenses.

Ken and his team at the Office of the State Treasurer re-architected the State’s $2 billion investment portfolio and overhauled the state employees’ $1 billion voluntary savings plan. These multi-year efforts improved investment performance and lowered costs for financial platforms that had not been meaningfully restructured in 20-35 years.

Ken applied the same top-to-bottom review conducted with respect to the investment and retirement platforms to the state’s banking architecture and proposed a like course of activities for Delaware’s debt portfolio. Both of these undertakings require a multi-year, holistic approach to reform.

In the first case, the arrangement of financial services for Delaware’s $10 billion in annual spending is fragmented and decentralized, resulting in inefficiencies through both gaps and redundancies and unnecessary exposure to cyber-security threats. A review begun in 2017 with an inter-agency banking task force produced an actionable set of recommendations adopted in the Governor’s first ever report on Government Efficiency and Accountability (GEAR).

In the latter instance, while Delaware has maintained an AAA rating on its debt issuances, new regulations focused on off-balance sheet liabilities as well as an all-time high in per capita borrowing suggest that more can be done to institutionalize the state’s debt policy and examine long-term debt feasibility.

As one of only four Bond Issuing Officers, Ken offered detailed steps for improving Delaware’s capital budgeting and borrowing processes.