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 essay focuses on elements of success in a system linked to employment.

Description: This is a summary of a new research paper entitled: “Determining Discount Rates Required to Fund Defined Benefit Plans” by John Turner and three other economists, which describes a new way to look at pension funding for ongoing plans that is a variant of using expected returns (currently used in public plans) that takes into account the risk that contributions will be needed in the future for this year’s benefit accruals.

Description: Article suggests future steps with regard to this project and provides information on where to get the essays.

Description: Introduction to the January 2017 issue of The Pension Forum.

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 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.