Description: This article discusses funding flat-benefit pensions and suggests steps to address what will likely be a future underfunded plan.

Description: This article describes a simplified problem in pension plan financing and presents two questions about how it can be modeled. Answers to these questions will be discussed and their implications for traditional actuarial models will be presented in Part 2 of the article in the following issue of the newsletter.

Description: Part 2 of an article which presents simplified problem and and presented alternate models. Answers are presented in this article. The author's final question is: If traditional actuarial models stumble over these issues, can we get it right for real world funding pension plans and funding practices?

Description: This working paper discusses the risks of investing in stocks in public pension funds.

Description: Pension Forecasts, Part One: Some Questions by Lawrence N. Bader from Risks and Rewards Newsletter, February 2001, Issue No. 36.

Description: This paper discusses the limits placed on actuarial pension practice since the passage of ERISA. From The Pension Forum, January 2003, Volume 15, Issue No. 1.

Description: The author of this article notes that “valuing pension or long-term disability plans with Social Security offsets generally requires some assumptions about the future course of the wage base and benefit formula,” and “the usual approach is to select annual percentage increases for these two variables which relate reasonably and well to the valuation salary scale, and then to project Social Security on that basis.” The author goes on to discuss how the actuary and plan sponsor can be comfortable with a particular choice of parameters, given that “costs can be very sensitive to the Social Security projection and recent history offers little guidance.”

Description: Pension Forecasts, Part II: The Model Has No Clothes by Lawrence N. Bader from Risks and Rewards Newsletter, July 2001, Issue No. 37.

Description: Due to the decline in interest rates in 1993, the SEC staff began focusing on the discount rates being used for pension and postretirement benefit accounting under FASB Statement of Financial Accounting Standards FAS 87, 'Employers' Accounting for Pensions,' and FAS 106, 'Employers' Accounting for Postretirement Benefits Other Than Pensions.' Employers will need to assess their discount rates and, for some, reduce those rates significantly. To help plan sponsors comply with the SEC guidelines, Salomon Brothers has developed a Pension Discount Curve and a Pension Liability Index. This report reviews the construction of these two measures, as of December 1994.

Description: Falling equity markets and interest rates have devastated pension plans worldwide during the past several years. The Standard & Poor’s 500 companies enjoyed a collective pension surplus of $252 billion in 1999. Even after the 2003 market rally, they face a deficit of $179 billion in 2003 Bianco 2003. These events have spotlighted the weakness of current funding and investment practices for corporate defined benefit pension plans. This article presents a case for securing all accrued benefits through “Full Funding.”