Description: Legislative changes and the economic environment have created a need for plan sponsors to understand and manage pension risk and volatility. Dynamic asset allocation glidepaths reduce risk as plans become better funded. But what about the risk that plan sponsors face when their plans are underfunded? The presenters will discuss the challenges of managing pension risk when assets don't keep pace with liabilities.

Description: Many retirement actuaries have experience developing, implementing, and monitoring Liability Driven Investing (LDI) strategies for plan sponsors. These strategies typically involve modifying a plan’s investment strategy to remove a significant portion of the investment and interest rate risk now or at some point in the future when specific triggers are met. The tactics often involve the use of fixed income assets to cash flow and/or duration match the liabilities. In the spirit of helping actuaries expand their roles in an evolving defined contribution world, this article explores the application of LDI and derisking strategies within defined contribution and individual retirement accounts. The economic theory behind this approach is called the lifecycle hypothesis, or lifecycle finance. The benefits of the lifecycle finance method are that it provides a safe approach to save for retirement and a secure source of floor income during retirement. Similar to pension plans, each individual has his or her own idiosyncratic needs, wants, and risks that should be considered. Actuaries are uniquely situated to help defined contribution plan sponsors, individuals, and even themselves implement the lifecycle finance approach by developing and distributing tools and methods that focus on income (rather than wealth), LDI strategies, and personalization.

Description: The presenters in this session will show attendees how to measure surplus risk for a corporate pension plan (or a pension plan where liabilities are valued on a current marked to market yield curve) in several different ways, understand the value of each of those methods, and use the results to make decisions on relevant corporate pension actions such as asset allocation and pension risk transfer. They will also compare LDI strategies between corporate and public pension plans.