Description: The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that the virtues of “marked-to-market” pension accounting are greatly exaggerated for both public and private pension plans. It is demonstrated that the “marked-to-market” paradigm, as applied to pensions, is based on a questionable economic foundation and may produce plenty of “misinformation” of its own. From the Pension Section News, September 2008, Issue No. 68.

Description: Fact sheet summarizing the U.S. Public Pension Plans Contribution Analysis report.

Description: A summary of learnings about multiemployer and public plans. Encouraging all retirement actuaries to become better educated on the various sectors of the retirement industry. Take time to meet actuaries from other sectors to learn about their experiences and challenges. We’ll all benefit when we have a better understanding of each other and focus on areas of common concern rather than our differences

Description: This article presents the background around the Post Retirement Needs and Risk call for essays focused on: (1) defined contribution plan risk management strategies; (2) decumulation strategies for retirement and (3) long-term care financing. The important essays from that exercise are presented in this Pension Section News publication along with interviews of the winning authors.

Description: Presented at Living to 100 symposium, January 2002. This paper presents data on the mortality, and mortality improvement trends, for retired U.S. Civil Service employees and their survivors, and analyzes the relationship to such factors as: Indexed final salary, Amount of indexed annuity, Total service at retirement, Duration on the Annuity Rolls, Retiree vs. beneficiary, Disability vs. non-disability.

Description: Introduction to the paper that documents the flaws of the current financial model.

Description: Part 1 proposes solutions to the first of three flaws of the current financial model to obtaining the fair value of the public sector employer’s pension benefit liability.

Description: Reflecting Congressional desire for unified reports on all Federal retirement systems, Public Law 95-595, signed by the President in October 1978, requires annual reports from these systems similar to the ERISA reports from private sector plans. The author, as Chief Actuary of the DoD, discusses the first report produced.

Description: The military retirement system is a funded, noncontributory, defined-benefit plan that includes nondisability retired pay, disability retired pay, and survivor annuity programs. This article discusses the additional benefits created by the Military Retirement Reform Act of 1986.

Description: The author assess the financial performance of pension privatization in Europe.