Description: Capital Market Assumptions—The Past Performance Future Returns Debate by Jane Arnold and Jennifer Donnelly from Pension Section News, November 1998, Issue No. 38.

Description: This article describes a simplified problem in pension plan financing and presents two questions about how it can be modeled. Answers to these questions will be discussed and their implications for traditional actuarial models will be presented in Part 2 of the article in the following issue of the newsletter.

Description: Part 2 of an article which presents simplified problem and and presented alternate models. Answers are presented in this article. The author's final question is: If traditional actuarial models stumble over these issues, can we get it right for real world funding pension plans and funding practices?

Description: In the U.S. in the late 1980’s, the Internal Revenue Service was taking steps to try to institute explicit boundaries for the actuarial assumptions being used in 'funding' valuations to determine the appropriate contribution levels for small pension plans. This article was written in the context of that environment, to defend the rights of actuaries to their professional judgement. The courts eventually supported this perspective.

Description: This research study presents the results of termination rates which do not match the pattern of the T tables in use since first produced in the 1950. Documentation of the data included in the study and the supporting observations are set forth in this paper. From the Pension Forum, August 1992.

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: 1993 SOA Spring Meeting, San Diego. This session discussed the proposed standards for determining the economic assumptions for the purposes of measuring pension obligations. The actuary's determination of the interest rate assumption was the primary focus of the discussion.

Description: These discussions at the 1967 New York and New Orleans Regional Meetings are about considerations in choosing interest assumptions and challenges presented when comparing investment yields among companies.

Description: This discussion explores actuarial assumptions for interest, mortality and disability. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1961, Vol. 13, Pt. 2.

Description: This paper presents a methodology that represents the common ground between the major camps in the debate over the defined benefits DB system.