Description: The author shares the story of his actuarial career and provides insight into the development of retirement today and the past and future of the pension actuary.

Description: This article focuses on retirement decisions, phased retirement and related policy issues, calling for actuaries to take on leadership roles in retirement public discussion.

Description: In 1995, Mexico replaced the public pay-as-you-go system by a privately managed system based on individual accounts. This paper analyzes the causes that made necessary the reform of the old Mexican pay-as-you-go pension system. A description of the modifications and current situation of the pension system also are discussed. The paper concludes that although the pension system has been modified during the last few years, there are still some weaknesses that have to be corrected to provide an appropriate retirement benefit to workers.

Description: summary of Canadian topics from recent Retirement Section Council meeting. Update on defined contribution initiative and potential US legislation. Highlight recent SOA research on retirement income.

Description: Article discusses how middle class Americans are doing in saving for retirement, sources of incomes and results of the Survey of Consumer Finances.

Description: How can we manage decumulation in an era of Defined Contribution plans? Marketing and incentives for annuity conversion, pooled-type retirement plans plus developing a "Social Security longevity annuity" can all be pieces of the solution.

Description: Discusses a wide range of issues related to financial decision making and aging. Includes discussion of cognitive decline, fraud and poor decisions. Brings in role of technology and tools.

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: State and local pension plans provide their stakeholders with a great deal of information. However, that information is typically not presented in a user-friendly way. Summary documents often fail to give their readers a clear and comprehensive picture of a plan's finances. The premise of the SOA Project described in this article is that there is a need for concise summary reviews of a plan's operations. The Project's mandate included the preparation of two sample reviews of two different state systems that might serve as models, but not rigid templates for reviews prepared by plan management. This article describes and compares the two reviews and their accompanying dashboards, and also addresses the Project's broader goals. The article emphasizes that it is not the exact shape or format of a summary review that matters, but how effectively it conveys the current state and prospects of a plan's finances.

Description: This article was presented at the 1975 Spring Cincinnati Joint Meeting of the Conference of Actuaries in Public Practice and Society of Actuaries and addresses the impact of the following changes on future needs for pension coverage, future amounts of pension benefits, and costs of funding.