Research Projects
Research Projects in Pension
Survey on the Prevalence of Traditional and Hybrid Defined Benefit Pension Plans
This report presents the results of a survey intended to examine the prevalence of traditional
and hybrid defined benefit pension plans in large organizations with operations in the United States. It is hoped
that the report will prove useful to pension practitioners and policymakers wishing to gauge the effect of a recent
US court ruling with potentially widespread implications for pension plans commonly referred to as cash balance
plans.
The results of the survey show that approximately forty percent of private sector and a quarter
of public sector defined benefit plan participants' benefits are determined by some form of hybrid benefit design
feature. The survey was sponsored and originally conceived by the SOA's Committee on Retirement Systems Research.
Mathew Greenwald and Associates, Inc. administered the survey and prepared the resulting report.