Description: This paper examines tandem levels of salary and interest rates and finds that the absolute level of each assumption as well as the differential are significant cost determinants for defined benefit pension plans. In forming best-estimate salary and interest rate assumptions, the actuary must reconcile the difference, if any, between the currently observed rates and the valuation assumptions. Common practice is to choose expected long-term rather than observed rates for valuation purposes. The error in this procedure is analyzed and found to be tolerable for strictly temporary discrepancies between observed rates and valuation assumptions. For situations where these discrepancies are expected to persist for some time, a need is shown for nonuniform, calendar-year assumptions or their equivalent in order to develop best-estimate assumptions. Followed by several discussion papers submitted

Description: Portability of pension benefits allows an employee to maintain pension benefits as he leaves one company and joins another. Advocates of portability point approvingly to the way Social Security - a portable pension plan - handles employee mobility. In their view, the private pension system would be fairer to participants and close a gap in pension coverage if it had more portability.

Description: This is the Presidential Address at the SOA annual meeting of October 1995. He highlights initiatives undertaken over the past two years to move the SOA from an inward-looking to an outward-looking organization.

Description: This meeting session, which occurred at the April 1982 Society of Actuaries meeting in Orlando, presented a discussion of U.S. Social Security issues. Questions discussed included: 1. What is the financial status of the Social Security program? 2. What changes have been recently adopted and what changes have been proposed? 3. How would these changes affect the private pension system costs and plan design? 4. What is the proper role of the actuarial profession regarding the Social Security program? Included discussion of the paper, Constant Replacement Ratios in Retirement: A Theoretical Approach,' by Barnet N. Berin and Anthony B. Richter.

Description: Panelists will discuss and stimulate audience discussion on the potential roles and opportunities for actuaries during and after health care reform. Included is a perspective from Cananda's experience. From Record of Society of Actuaries Vol. 20, No. 3B.

Description: This session from the 1976 Winter SOA Meeting is a teaching session about the gain and loss analysis in pension actuarial and its essential part of the pension valuation process.

Description: Actuarial literature in the twenty-five years includes discussions of a well known inequality. Among the recent papers on various aspects of this classic result are those by Berin 1970, Olson 1975 and Sarason 1960. A standard method for achieving this inequality uses Jensen's inequality. This is the method used by Bowers, et al 1983. We will also employ this method in an attempt to learn about it.

Description: This is a discussion of 'The Generalized Family of Aggregate Actuarial Cost Methods for Pension Funding' by John R. Taylor. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1967, Vol. 19, Pt. 1, No. 54.

Description: In this article, the authors describe the flaws in our current determination of the Consumer Price Index CPI and other economic indicators, and propose a series of refinements for improving the CPI calculations. The article emphasizes the importance of accuracy, given the significant influence on business and investment policies, psychological effect on the marketplace, as well as on consumer confidence, and the direct impact on Social Security increases and other benefit plans.

Description: In this paper, mortality trends of males and females are examined from the beginnings of the human species until the present. Future projections are also made, and the implications of the widening gap in survival rates of women vs. men is discussed.