Description: This article discusses some of the ideas of pension finance, how to present such information, and how it was presented to the New York City Retirement Systems (NYCRS) in a way that made it available to other interested parties, including the public.

Description: Technological innovations are disrupting traditional business models, improving products, and enhancing the user experience.

Description: A new retirement option has been added to the defined benefit plan for federal workers to allow retirees to work part time while receiving part of their pension benefit.

Description: This is a summary of a new research paper entitled: “Determining Discount Rates Required to Fund Defined Benefit Plans” by John Turner and three other economists, which describes a new way to look at pension funding for ongoing plans that is a variant of using expected returns (currently used in public plans) that takes into account the risk that contributions will be needed in the future for this year’s benefit accruals.

Description: The Employee Retiree Income Security Act, or ERISA, establishes an important statutory role for pension actuaries in the United States. As part of its statutory goal to protect the retirement security of America’s workers, ERISA requires tax-qualified defined benefit plans to obtain an actuarial valuation of plan reserves each year. When valuing the plan’s reserves, the actuary is required by ERISA to act on behalf of plan participants. Thus, the plan actuary fulfills an important role in maintaining the plan’s ability to meet its on-going obligations to the plan participants and their beneficiaries. From Pension Section News, April 2006, Issue No. 61.

Description: Comments on Robert North’s paper, a real case study of disclosing MVL in a public employee retirement system.

Description: Response to David Kausch’s comments on the paper.

Description: The article discusses the Texas Pension Review Board's Guidelines for Actuarial Soundness applicable to Texas state public retirement systems (including the system's amortization period), and how these guidelines are consistent with and complementary to both the current GASB 27 ARC disclosure, and the imminent GASB 67 & 68 disclosures. The GASB requirements will change from a de facto funding standard to strictly disclosure requirements, with a focus on plans whose funding trajectory is the poorest.

Description: This article was commissioned by the Society of Actuaries Pension Section Research Team to provide practitioners and researchers with a listing of Web sites containing information about defined benefit plans outside the United States. It also lists some non-Internet information sources. The research team’s primary motivation for the article was its belief that readily available comparative information on the pension environment in other countries, including current design and funding issues, would benefit practitioners and researchers dealing with similar issues.