Description: There is no silver bullet to improving retirement income outcomes for retirees. However, a combination of changes can be of significant value in addressing this overlooked issue. Although QLACs on the surface have potential value, they are not nearly as efficient as they could be. So far, employer plans have provided limited options for retirement income solutions. IRAs may not cost effectively serve the best interest of retirees. Employer plans should be encouraged to become retirement income providers and alternative approaches should be considered. The current prohibition on allowing plans to modify benefit payouts based on mortality experience should be reconsidered to allow for innovative plan income designs. Improvements to the deaccumulation stage of the retiree nest egg are challenging yet necessary.

Description: Replacement rates have historically been a tool to determine the adequacy of retirement income to maintain an individual’s standard of living. Numerous conceptual and methodological issues lie, however, beneath its simple exterior. The purpose of this paper is to examine these underlying issues for the benefit of retirement security stakeholders, pension plan sponsors, advisors, financial product providers, and individuals planning for retirement.

Description: Staff Fellow introductory column with discussion of the role of actuaries for defined contribution plans and recently released research on generational differences in retirement planning and savings.

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: As the population and workforce age, it is important to rethink how and when we retire. This article provides a big picture overview of issues related to opening up more options for exit from the labor force and gradual retirement. It reviews developments in the last few years that are important including the growth of gig employment, more remote work, more technology, workforce shortages, and changes in employee benefits that previously were a barrier to gradual retirement. It calls for more focus on adaption to the aging society. Several publications are cited and it includes a reference list.

Description: Navigate a perspective on the process of developing estimates and projections of mortality rates, based on a Living to 100 paper by the teacher. Discover the approach and considerations an actuary (or others) can take to develop a mortality rate assumption for five time periods. It will describe techniques to estimate historical mortality rates from which to project future mortality rates.

Description: Mortality Model Selection and Combination in RAlternative approaches for selecting mortality models and forecasting mortality have been proposed. The usual practice is to base mortality forecasts on a single mortality model selected using in-sample goodness-of-fit measures. However, cross-validation and other alternative out-of-sample measures are increasingly being used in model selection, and model combination methods are becoming a common alternative to using a single mortality model. Such methods combine predictions from multiple mortality models to reduce model choice uncertainty and improve forecast accuracy. Explore techniques to select and combine mortality models using the freely available open source R package CoMoMo (https://github.com/kessysalvatory/CoMoMo), which extends the widely used R package StMoMo (https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=StMoMo). We will use data for the USA and other countries to discuss and demonstrate four different model combination approaches including simple model averaging, Bayesian model averaging, model confidence set, and stacked regression ensembles.

Description: "On the decomposition of mortality models into causes of death – Andrés M Villegas Ph.D – UNSW Australia, Madhavi Bajekal, Ph.D.,HONFIA, University of London, UK, Steven Haberman, Ph.D. – Bayes Business School, University of London, UK Forecasting cause-specific mortality rates using the insights from the cointegration analysis, Séverine Arnold, PhD, Viktoriya Glushko, Department of Actuarial Science, Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC Lausanne), University of Lausanne, Switzerland"

Description: The paper demonstrates that the most popular rationalization for evolving glide paths is flawed and should be discarded. The paper also demonstrates that glide paths should generally evolve for investors that endeavor to optimize outcomes and reevaluate their portfolios regularly.

Description: Overview/Foreword by the 2017 Symposium Chair and Foreword by the 2020 Symposium Chair.