Description: This is a discussion about pension plan design and mechanics including: 1. Adjustment of pension benefits for inflation, 2. Major revisions or plan terminations, 3. Development of group pension contracts, and 4. Design problems of negotiated plans. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1967, Vol. 19 Pt. 2, No. 55.

Description: Panelists discuss the retirement income needs of employees and how those needs are being met by existing and evolving retirement programs. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 24, No. 3.

Description: This paper examines the growing trend toward phased retirement in which workers move slowly into full-time leisure, and then the paper suggests alternative pension designs to accommodate the trend. From Retirement Needs Framework, M-RS00-1.

Description: This 1978 discussion session focuses on the impact on pension plan design due to: 1. The 1977 Amendments to the Social Security Act, 2. The Administration's proposal in regard to integration of private pension plan benefits with Social Security benefits, 3. The requirement to eliminate compulsory retirement prior to age 70, and 4. The U.S. Supreme Court decision in City of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, et al. v. Manhart, et al. which held that an employer violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when it requires women to contribute more than men to a pension fund in order to receive the same level of benefits.

Description: This discussion is about the issues and problems under the new IRS rules effective in 1989 for pension plans integrated with Social Security. From Record of the Society of Actuaries Vol. 15, No. 1.

Description: This paper proposes a mandatory universal pension system MUPS which would be a system of fully portable IRA accounts piggy-backed on to existing Social Security withholding.

Description: Current DC plans do an extremely poor job at managing investment and longevity risk for plan participants. This leads to suboptimal outcomes: retirement income is potentially too low, assets are subject to catastrophic losses and may even run out. Insurance solutions—most notably annuities—address some of these issues, but are expensive and not very much liked by consumers. This paper explores how Enhanced Risk Sharing Savings Accounts (“ERiSSA”), consisting of a combination of individual DC accounts with a collective risk sharing and return redistribution mechanism coupled with deferred annuities, might be able to strike a better overall balance for consumers.

Description: Defined contribution DC plans are often touted as being far easier for employees to understand than defined benefit DB plans. This may be true during the accumulation phase, but it is not necessarily so at retirement. Many DC plan members have little understanding of converting their DC account balances into income streams at retirement. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Volume 29, No. 2, Session 120pd.

Description: The authors present the myriad of issues affecting an individuals retirement decision and highlight studies from Mercer and AARP. They find that Americans are increasingly creating their own personalized phased retirement programs in this evolving area of human resources management.

Description: This material summarizes work done to date to develop a model for a quantitative evaluation framework for retirement benefit systems.