Leadership Corner: Treasurer Curtis Loftis

Curtis Loftis is a successful business owner and the founder and benefactor of The Saluda Charitable Foundation.

Curtis M. Loftis, Jr. is also the State Treasurer of South Carolina. What does that mean? What does he stand for and why should it matter to you? Simply put Curtis Loftis is a strong fiscal conservative and passionate advocate of taxpayers committed to transparency, accountability and efficiency in government and will do whatever is necessary to protect the state’s taxpayer dollars, regardless of who it makes uncomfortable.

Curtis Loftis is a man of action who looked around and saw waste, fraud and abuse. He began asking questions and was not pleased with the answers, or specifically the non-answers, he received.

Curtis Loftis began a crusade against several South Carolina intuitions to include the South Carolina Retirement System. The why and how the Pension System was underperforming by billions of dollars and on pace to underperform billions more drove much of his first term as Treasurer. His passion to find the truth caused the entitled institutions to multiply efforts to keep the Treasurer on the outside and away from the information he needed.

But his questions ultimately led to a recent Legislative Audit Council’s (LAC) report of the South Carolina Retirement System. The report confirmed  many of Curtis Loftis’s statements of the system does not make enough money, pays too much in fees and has a skyrocketing pension underfunded approximately of $21.5 billion. Treasurer Loftis is not credited as being right on the issue.

“My quest for pension reform has been a lonely one. Four years ago I foresaw our system’s current crisis and began speaking on the issue. Since then, I have been publically censored by the Investment Commission, hauled before Senate Committees, dragged before the Supreme Court and have fought several attempts by the Senate to have me removed from the very system I was protecting,” said Treasurer Loftis.

Nationally, Treasurer Loftis has been working to raise returns by lowering fees, properly stating risk and implementing meaningful transparency and accountability. National Media such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Business and Reuters have all featured Curtis Loftis and his fight for accountability and transparency in public pension plans.

His election promise to protect state funds by working to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse to ensure transparency and accountability to state government is a promise kept. Notable accomplishments include: saving $164 million refinancing debt; saving $1.3 million annually by restructuring banking fees; reworking the Future Scholar 529 College Savings Direct Plan so it now has the lowest fees in the nation and retained the State’s first bond disclosure counsel to establish statewide standardized processes and disclosure for bond work.

The battles for Treasurer Curtis Loftis will go on as he and other Treasurers take action against the Federal Government to return abandoned and matured Savings Bonds to South Carolina and other states. Additionally, Big Insurance Companies are attempting to make it harder for people to claim life benefits.

For Treasurer Loftis, being in office means taking on the important issues most elected officials won’t.