Description: This paper presents a theoretical treatment of the determination of the cost of vesting by a method not hitherto demonstrated to the Society. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1966, Vol. 18, Pt. 1, No. 52.

Description: This paper summarizes third millennium pension research available on the Society of Actuaries Website. The research is organized by categories. In some cases research is assigned to more than one category due to overlap. The goal is to enable a pension actuary who is looking for a research resource to ascertain if there is relevant research and if so to be able to find and download the information. For each item, the year the research was released, the form of research e.g. literature search, paper, survey and a brief synopsis are provided.

Description: This summary is intended to provide the pension actuary with guidance in interpreting and using the termination and retirement information in the 2003 SOA Pension Plan Termination and Retirement Study. The tables in the study were developed based on 1.7 million life years of data from 112 plans collected primarily from actuarial consulting firms for the period 1995 – 2000.

Description: It is common for a pension plan to be amended to improve benefits in respects of service after the date of amendment. This will be referred to as a non-retroactive amendment. The application of the entry age normal and projected unit credit cost methods to this situation requires that a decision be made about the way to handle such an amendment. In this paper, these two cost methods and their application to such an amendment are considered in turn. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1994, Vol. 1.

Description: A mathematical framework for benefits and choices must be created to model benefit selection. This paper creates such a framework by defining benefit plans as reimbursement functions. These are then used with a defined choice function to calculate the cost deviation due to selection. Finally, utility functions can be applied to this framework to predict choice.

Description: This research, based on data from regulatory filings in Ontario, with supplementary information from British Columbia and the United States, examines funding valuation discount rates.

Description: A comparison of recently used mortality assumptions among state-based and large-city public pension plans to the Pub-2010 Mortality Tables.

Description: This paper studies the variability of pension costs and fund levels under various funding methods. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1990, Vol. 1.

Description: A mathematical model is described which facilitates the comparison of different pension funding methods. Rates of return are assumed firstly to be random and then to be represented by an autoregressive model for the corresponding force of interest. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1990, Vol. 1.

Description: The report presents the results of a survey on asset valuation methods for defined benefit plans. Information was provided on 9,670 pension plans, 9026 US plans, 612 Canadian plans, and 32 other plans. Fair market value is the frequently used method, especially for smaller plans.