The market meltdown of 2008-2009 has severely exacerbated challenges to a financially secure retirement including:

• Outliving assets as a result of increasing longevity.
• Added responsibility placed on individuals for ensuring their financial resources last for life caused by the shift in the prevalence of defined benefit to defined contributions plans.
• Costs for health and long-term care needs outpacing general inflation.

Faced with these growing challenges, many workers are delaying their retirement or questioning whether they will ever be able to retire. It is difficult to pick up a newspaper without reading about the challenging effects of the economic downturn on retirement, and there is no lack of diverse (and sometimes contradictory) expert opinion on what individuals should do in light of recent events.

Given the confluence of these events, a number of questions come to the forefront. How can individuals and families maintain a reliable income stream in retirement that can sustain adverse economic events? How can they protect against financial ruin from exorbitant expenses for health and long-term care? How can financial planners and their clients improve decision-making along with better ways to frame and communicate the challenges and potential solutions? What are potential new products that can address these challenges? How can individuals optimize their decisions focusing on products, services and strategies based on the latest research and disciplined thinking, rather than sales slogans and misperceptions? These questions and other related ones are the motivation for this Call for Papers.

To expand thinking on how to optimize retirement security in the new economic environment, the Society of Actuaries' Committee on Post Retirement Needs and Risks is issuing this Call for Papers, inviting researchers, practitioners and other professionals to explore this topic from a variety of perspectives. The Committee is seeking to compile papers that represent the latest in thinking about retirement planning and financing. It is the goal of this effort that taken together, the selected papers will provide a multi–disciplinary, textured analysis of the topic.

Authors may submit either original research or expository papers. The papers have no required minimum or maximum length.

The target audiences include financial planners and other advisors, non-professional individual planners, product developers, employee benefit plan sponsors, actuaries, benefits consultants, academics, and other retirement professionals. The focus is on planning for individuals and their families as well as providing products and services to meet their needs.

The following is a list of potential issues that authors may wish to consider. Please note these issues are only intended to serve as examples and are not meant to restrict potential ideas in any way. The broadest topics are listed first, with more narrow topics listed later. Authors should feel free to go into depth on the more narrow topics, or to address the narrow topics in the context of a broad, holistic approach.

Broad Topics

• What are holistic approaches to financial security in retirement that produce a reliable income stream and protect against high "end-of-life" expenses for long-term care and medical care? How would different economic scenarios, including "normal" times, recession/depression, and high inflation be factored in? Should these approaches be translated into software, products or both?
• How can you build a reliable income stream in retirement that survives various economic scenarios, including "normal" times, recession/depression, and high inflation? How would Social Security, pension benefits from an employer, draw down from retirement savings and deployment of home equity be incorporated?
• How do you deploy retirement savings to produce a reliable income stream? Which combination of drawdown or laddering strategies and purchasing products such as immediate annuities, longevity insurance and reverse mortgages minimizes the risk of outliving resources and protecting against inflation? How does the approach change if there are significant benefits from an employer-sponsored defined benefit plan?
• How should "Black Swan" and extreme scenarios be factored into the evaluation of planning scenarios?
• How long should an individual's working life be? What are the emerging paradigms around retirement and the work/retirement mix as well as retirement age?

Authors are invited to consider the above topics in the context of one or more of the following circumstances:

• Scenarios where life spans increase more rapidly than expected.
• Products and strategies for couples who want to ensure that both partners have a reliable income stream. Would the strategies change if one partner is of poor health or if there is a large difference in ages? How would the first death impact the surviving partner? Do such situations vary for men versus women? What special challenges are there for couples where one is active in managing finances and the other is passive? How do combination products fit in?
• Prioritization of competing risks against limited resources for retirement security and risk protection. How would resources be allocated?
• What are the optimal ages for shifts in investment portfolio composition and strategy? How should the products and strategies change as one ages? How is this changing as life expectancy increases and new products are emerging?
• How should the products and strategies differ according to the financial literacy of the individual or family?

More Narrow Topics

• What are strategies for addressing high "end-of-life" expenses for long-term care and medical care?
• What factors should be considered in the decision of whether to take a lump sum from a pension plan if offered? What are the trade-offs in taking a lump sum? Upsides versus Downsides?
• What factors should be considered in the decision of the optimal time to begin drawing Social Security benefits? How does this vary by circumstances? What are the trade-offs to be considered?
• What approaches can be used for the decision of whether to pay off debt for mortgages, car loans and credit cards, or remain leveraged to maximize invested assets? How does it differ in various economic climates, including "normal" times, recession/depression, and high inflation?
• How can the decision of whether to purchase products such as immediate annuities, longevity insurance or reverse mortgages be framed to improve the individual decision-making process? Under what circumstances are these products good choices?
• How do individuals best work with financial planners who may have a stake in their decisions about deploying retirement savings, home equity and choices in employer-sponsored plans?
• What is the better choice for a participant in an employer-sponsored defined benefit plan who wants to protect a beneficiary? (a) Elect a joint and survivor annuity or (b) elect a life annuity and then purchase life insurance for the beneficiary.
• In the decision of whether to buy an immediate income annuity, which type would be optimal in light of various economic climates? How does it differ for simple fixed annuities, variable annuities, and recent innovations such as guaranteed withdrawals, protection of principal and guaranteed accumulations. Should staggered purchases be used? What are the trade-offs between different types of products, and between these products and managing money on your own? How do the costs and potential returns for various products factor in?
• How do annuities fit into diversification and asset mix during the payout period? How should asset mix be redefined?
• What are the best ways to deploy home equity to produce income in retirement and how can reverse mortgages be used to support these approaches?
• What are the best ways to balance a desire for bequests with the need for a steady income stream?
• What factors should be considered in whether it is desirable to purchase deferred income annuities on a staggered basis in a 401(k) plan, if offered?
• How do new financial instruments enable different and better approaches to products and planning?

As mentioned above, this is just a sample of issues that fall under the scope of this Call for Papers. Authors are also feel free to combine several issues when developing their abstracts.

Please submit an abstract or outline of your proposed paper by April 15, 2010 to:

• Barbara Scott
• Society of Actuaries
• f: 847.273.8592
• e–mail: bscott@soa.org

At a minimum, the abstract submission should include a brief description of the subject of the paper, a list of key items to be covered and a brief biographical paragraph summarizing the author's experience, prior publications and presentations and contact information.

Submitted abstracts will be evaluated by a review group for their potential for presentation at an SOA-sponsored event targeted in 2010. The exact dates and details will be decided at a later time.

Abstract submissions will be accepted, accepted subject to revision or declined. The review group is scheduled to complete its evaluation of the abstracts/outlines in May 2010.

All papers must be based on accepted abstracts and submitted in a complete format no later than September 15, 2010.

The procedure for submission of papers includes the following specific guidelines:

• Submissions with special publication requests should include them in the original submission.
• Submissions should be made electronically to Barbara Scott at bscott@soa.org.

The review group, after receiving all submissions, will determine if a meeting event for presenting the papers is appropriate. Should this occur:

• It is anticipated that travel and lodging expenses for authors selected to present at the event will be reimbursed, up to certain limits.
• A final determination as to the number of papers invited to present will be made after all abstracts have been submitted and reviewed.

It is anticipated that all accepted papers will be published. The papers will appear in an on–line monograph and, where appropriate, in Society of Actuaries publications. Upon author request, accepted papers may also be submitted to peer–reviewed journals.

The Society of Actuaries prefers to publish all papers and to copyright all published papers without a previous copyright. However, it will work with authors as necessary for special publication situations.

The Society of Actuaries reserves the right to reject or not publish any papers not meeting the criteria and standards set by the review group.

Please direct any questions regarding this Call for Papers to:

• Steven Siegel, Research Actuary
• Society of Actuaries
• ph: 847.706.3578
• f: 847.273.8578
• e–mail: ssiegel@soa.org