Description: Background of the Manhart case on sex discrimination in pension rates, summary of the brief prepared for the case by an SOA task force, and text of a letter submitted to the court by SOA members critical of the brief.

Description: Overview of SOA-sponsored seminars held in July 1978 in four cities to discuss current issues in the private sector relating to the new OASDI benefit formulas.

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: This brief article notes that Mr. Donald S. Grubbs, Jr., who was intimately involved in the discussions that took place both before and after the enactment of ERISA, gave a talk entitled Three Years of ERISA: A Critical Appraisal to the Pension Research Council last May.

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

Description: The Defined Benefit 'DB' underpin Defined Contribution hybrid pension plan offers an attractive combination of benefit security and upside potential for pension plan members, and offers cost containment for employers, whilst still ensuring the provision of adequate equitable benefits. The DB underpin guarantee is valued and hedged as a financial option within the traditional funding paradigms of actuarial science. However, the average monthly hedging costs are time dependent and can be unstable when employees are close to retirement. This is the abstract of a paper that proposes some cost control approaches to reduce the volatility of the hedging cost.

Description: This is the abstract of a paper that addresses the question of how an employer can offer phased retirement in such a way that, indeed, employees work longer before fully retiring.

Description: Recently, we have seen renewed interest in the international (or “offshore”) pension plan. An international plan typically provides benefits for internationally mobile workers of a multinational employer, but can also be used for certain other workers. The plan is usually located in a respected international finance centre.

Description: An interview with Prof. Johnny Li of University of Waterloo, which touches upon the subjects of longevity, mortality projections, international collaboration and the Living to 100 Symposium. Longevity is a topic in which scientific research and collaboration successfully spans many countries, which is desirable because the implications of ever increasing life spans is of global importance.