Description: The Actuary Vol. 22, No. 1. This article discusses the impact of a change in procedure in the financing of the US Military Retirement System. The change requires amortizing the past service liability. The impact will depend upon whether the amortization is achieved by increasing current taxes and decreasing the current deficit, or by merely increasing the national debt and leaving the current deficit unchanged. The author asserts that the new financing method will not weaken the financial condition of the military retirement system, and that it has the potential to strengthen its financial condition if the funding of the past service liability is handled appropriately.

Description: A critique of the SOA's co-sponsoring of the Manhart Brief which addressed sex discrimination in pension rates. The critique argues that the brief fails to satisfy standards of academic rigor reflected in other SOA publications.

Description: The author delves into other important parts that should be in the scope of model validation besides the code.

Description: This article discusses the need for a sophisticated modeling system capable of analyzing the impact of the variables present in pension plan projections and providing management with information which it may act upon.

Description: The author of this article notes that “valuing pension or long-term disability plans with Social Security offsets generally requires some assumptions about the future course of the wage base and benefit formula,” and “the usual approach is to select annual percentage increases for these two variables which relate reasonably and well to the valuation salary scale, and then to project Social Security on that basis.” The author goes on to discuss how the actuary and plan sponsor can be comfortable with a particular choice of parameters, given that “costs can be very sensitive to the Social Security projection and recent history offers little guidance.”

Description: Review of Fifty-Second Annual Report of the Board of Actuaries of the Civil Service Retirement System. The authors found it to be a concise well written report discussing a number of issues facing all pensions in an inflationary economy. Both the title and the dull format in the usual Government Printing Office style would seem to insure this document's instantaneous consignment to dead storage. However, behind the cover of this small pamphlet is a concise, well written report discussing-a-number of the issues facing not only federal pension programs at the present time, but all pensions in an inflationary economy. For example, several of the 11 pages devoted to the main report discuss the implications of static assumptions ignoring inflation as opposed to dynamic assumptions including inflation.

Description: Book review of The Fundamentals of Pension Mathematics by Barnet E. Barin. Mr. Griffin supports the text as a valuable contribution in particular his analysis of gains/losses by source during the transition to utilizing computers for pension valuation.

Description: Discusses two different issues of current concern in the UK: Transfer Values and Personal Pensions.

Description: The Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 87. Employers’ Accounting for Pensions, became effective in 1987. This is an accounting/actuarial standard with significant income statement and balance sheet implications. This article discuses the results of a survey of selected affected companies regarding the impact of this standard.

Description: A summary of the October 31 meeting of the Board of Governors, where topics included education and examination requirements, SOA organization, pension terminology, publications, didivend philosophy, subcommittee operations, financial statement certifications, the Executive Director position, and consolidation of North American actuarial organizations.