Description: This article discusses some of the ideas of pension finance, how to present such information, and how it was presented to the New York City Retirement Systems (NYCRS) in a way that made it available to other interested parties, including the public.

Description: This article addresses studies which came to different conclusions regarding whether 401k plans are financially advantageous. Also presented is a paper, using more elaborate assumptions, which analyzes the effects of 401 k participation at various income levels.

Description: Planning for retirement in North America has become much more challenging as the defined benefit system has declined. We must take more responsibility for ourselves. As we plan, many societal forces affect us. Both men and women are disadvantaged because Americans in particular are not very good savers. While pension plans and Social Security, or CPP/QPP/OAS in Canada, generally use the same formulas for men and women, often the results are different. This article focuses on the challenges women face in retirement.

Description: This article describes the library of material created by The Pension Finance Task Force on the SOA Web site containing well over 100 papers, essays, articles, and newsletters. Links to this information is provided. From the Pension Section News, September 2008, Issue No. 68.

Description: This is an essay on the measurement of the reasonableness of each individual non-economic actuarial assumption. From the Pension Section News, September 2008, Issue No. 68.

Description: The Employee Retiree Income Security Act, or ERISA, establishes an important statutory role for pension actuaries in the United States. As part of its statutory goal to protect the retirement security of America’s workers, ERISA requires tax-qualified defined benefit plans to obtain an actuarial valuation of plan reserves each year. When valuing the plan’s reserves, the actuary is required by ERISA to act on behalf of plan participants. Thus, the plan actuary fulfills an important role in maintaining the plan’s ability to meet its on-going obligations to the plan participants and their beneficiaries. From Pension Section News, April 2006, Issue No. 61.

Description: This article discusses how much should defined-benefit pension plan assets be and should actuaries decide the answer to this question?

Description: This article notes that actuaries can play a crucial role in assisting the couple, the attorney's and the human resources professional in alleviating headaches spawned by QDROs and provides simple steps to follow to minimize complexity, thereby saving legal and consulting fees for the divorcing couple and easing their stress.