Description: The standard for measuring retirement income adequacy has been the final earnings replacement rate (usually targeted at 70%). But - does it work?

Description: The author delves into other important parts that should be in the scope of model validation besides the code.

Description: The current financial model put forth as the market value of public sector pension benefit liabilities is simply the expected cash flows of the accumulated benefit obligation, as defined for current private sector financial reporting, discounted using a risk-free yield curve. This model is in serious need of an overhaul. This monograph addresses this issue.

Description: Part 1 proposes solutions to the first of three flaws of the current financial model to obtaining the fair value of the public sector employer’s pension benefit liability.

Description: This article analyzes and confirms the circumstances where a change in the mortality assumption does and does not have a significant impact on pension valuations.

Description: Presented at April 1985 Spring Meeting. Discusses: Large plan actuarial assumptions, Small plan actuarial assumptions, Conflict between explicit assumptions and plan sponsor's objectives, and Immunization effect on the interest assumption.

Description: In this paper, a general model for a pension plan involving growth with respect to the population, salaries, and retirement benefits is used to study contribution patterns that may arise under different actuarial cost methods. Detailed results are presented for the case where the growth of population and the growth of salaries are described by exponential functions. Economic implications are presented and discussed. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1979, Vol. 31.

Description: A new approach to computing annual pension costs, based on an open-group projection of the participant population for a number of years, was described in detail in a paper published in the 1975 Transactions, entitled 'The Forecast Valuation Method for Pension Plans.' That paper described the operation of such a cost method at the initial valuation date. This paper discusses several alternative approaches to projection valuation methods and also describes how costs should be computed at valuation dates after the first one. In addition, the author illustrates projected contributions and asset buildups under both traditional [closed-group] cost methods and projected [open-group] cost methods, for a number of years under a variety of assumptions as to the growth rate of the participant group. Projection valuation methods have not been described heretofore in sufficient detail to make it possible for actuaries to use them on a recurring basis or for the Internal Revenue Service to make a determination as to the acceptability of such approaches for computing tax-deductible pension plan contributions. It is the hope of the author that this paper will fill both of those gaps. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1977, Vol. 29.

Description: Review of Fifty-Second Annual Report of the Board of Actuaries of the Civil Service Retirement System. The authors found it to be a concise well written report discussing a number of issues facing all pensions in an inflationary economy. Both the title and the dull format in the usual Government Printing Office style would seem to insure this document's instantaneous consignment to dead storage. However, behind the cover of this small pamphlet is a concise, well written report discussing-a-number of the issues facing not only federal pension programs at the present time, but all pensions in an inflationary economy. For example, several of the 11 pages devoted to the main report discuss the implications of static assumptions ignoring inflation as opposed to dynamic assumptions including inflation.

Description: This presentation was made at the 1975 Spring Cincinnati Joint Meeting of the Conference of Actuaries in Public Practice and Society of Actuaries. It discussed the following: how to choose the best pension assumptions and methods, how to arrive at interest assumptions, and the advantages of cost methods that reflect assumptions about new entrants and other changes in the group. 1975 Record Vol. 1, No. 3

Description: This paper surveys the actuarial techniques connected with salary scale mathematics for the valuation of defined benefit pension plans. Followed by several discussion papers submitted