Description: Actuaries have been thinking about how to improve North American retirement systems in big and small ways for a number of years. This web page contains Bob Berin’s thoughts on this topic from the September 1990 Pension Section News, followed by Cindy Levering’s update on the Retirement 20/20 initiative.

Description: Recognizing the increase in the rate of inflation over recent years in the United States, pension plans have been improving benefits for retired employees. In this paper, a planning model is developed for such increases, based on periodic examination of the increase in pension necessary to keep a replacement ratio constant. This ratio is initially related to the private pension plus Social Security benefit, divided by final average salary. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1982, Vol. 34.

Description: Portability of pension benefits allows an employee to maintain pension benefits as he leaves one company and joins another. Advocates of portability point approvingly to the way Social Security - a portable pension plan - handles employee mobility. In their view, the private pension system would be fairer to participants and close a gap in pension coverage if it had more portability.

Description: This presentation of the panel discussion from the 1977 Record of the SOA Vol. 3 No. 4 examines pension valuation and assumptions particularly assumption setting for Social Security Benefits, assumptions and methods for smaller plans, early retirement assumptions and funding of supplementary benefits, gain/loss and valuation assumptions.

Description: This session is about the national health & pension reform and the different agencies involved in the process. From Record of Society of Actuaries Vol. 20, No. 3A.

Description: This paper, presented by Gordon J. Munro at the Eastern Spring Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held March 24-25, 1960 in Washington, D.C., determines monetary functions of group annuity mortality based on the Ga-1951 Male Table, projected to 1960 by Projection Scale C. Includes discussion and errata sheet. From 1960 Transactions Vol. 12, No. 33.

Description: This paper presents recursion formulas in relation to FAS 87, Employers Accounting for Pensions. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1987, Vol. 39.

Description: Presents concerns regarding assumptions for inflation.

Description: This paper examines tandem levels of salary and interest rates and finds that the absolute level of each assumption as well as the differential are significant cost determinants for defined benefit pension plans. In forming best-estimate salary and interest rate assumptions, the actuary must reconcile the difference, if any, between the currently observed rates and the valuation assumptions. Common practice is to choose expected long-term rather than observed rates for valuation purposes. The error in this procedure is analyzed and found to be tolerable for strictly temporary discrepancies between observed rates and valuation assumptions. For situations where these discrepancies are expected to persist for some time, a need is shown for nonuniform, calendar-year assumptions or their equivalent in order to develop best-estimate assumptions. Followed by several discussion papers submitted