Description: Understanding U.S. defined-benefit plan annual funding notice definitions and what they are meant to represent is a key to understanding how “healthy” or “unhealthy” a pension plan is. This article offers a description of several types of funded status measurements and their applications under the rules mandated by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service to fund private employer-sponsored defined-benefit pension plans.

Description: This brief article notes that in a recent decision the U.S. Supreme Court touched on a fundamental issue of employee benefits philosophy, in holding that defined benefit pension plans must grant benefit accrual credit for periods of military service. The author argues that this seems contrary to current attitudes.

Description: This article covers considerations when an international parent may be faced with responsibility for a US retirement program.

Description: This article discusses the impact of increasing activity with respect to Solvency II in the United States.

Description: Article from Pension Section News, May 2007, No. 64, highlights a book by John Turner on international perspectives of individual accounts. In clear and concise language, Turner, a senior policy advisor at the AARP Public Policy Institute, explores the first-hand experience of other countries that have implemented, either partially or in full, aspects of social security reform that have been proposed for the U.S. system.

Description: This paper uses a mortality surge model to estimate the total financial impact on the U.S. insurance industry of a flu pandemic. It does not attempt to determine the probability of such a pandemic.

Description: Acquiring a U.S. Operation—A Primer by Valerie Lopez-Zinzer from International Section News, October 2004

Description: The Society’s Committee to Recommend a New Mortality Basis for Individual Annuity Valuation was formed in 1980 at NAIC request because the margins in the 1971 IAM Table had eroded. This article describes the development of the 1983 Table a and shows how well the 1973 Experience Table fits the underlying data.

Description: This paper shows the mortality element can be partially isolated allowing an exact annuity value to be readily obtained at any interest rate. From the Actuarial Research Clearing House 1979, Vol.2.

Description: Article from The Actuary, June 1971 – volume 5 - Issue 6 about Ulpian's Table, a table of life expectancies dating from about 220 A.D.