Description: This 1978 session focused on valuation techniques for pension plans. Topics covered: 1. Asset Valuation Methods 2. Use of projections and forecasts 3. Has application of forecasts allowed the actuary to determine short range best estimate of future costs different from traditional methods? 4. Treatment of salary scales, turnover assumptions, retirement decrements

Description: This study explores whether public pension plans have contributed enough to reduce unfunded liabilities, absent other influences such as investment returns.

Description: This is a summary of a new research paper entitled: “Determining Discount Rates Required to Fund Defined Benefit Plans” by John Turner and three other economists, which describes a new way to look at pension funding for ongoing plans that is a variant of using expected returns (currently used in public plans) that takes into account the risk that contributions will be needed in the future for this year’s benefit accruals.

Description: This study examines reductions in retirement benefits from the decline in defined benefit plans and increases in defined contribution plans during the past 20 years and what effect this has on workforce management. In particular how this change is affecting older workers’ decisions to retire and what effect this could have on companies. An underlying assumption implicit in evaluating the benefit of retirement of older workers is that productivity declines in old age while pay does not, leading to a pay productivity gap that could have an adverse effect on the employer from delayed retirement. The validity of this assumption was also examined.

Description: This sessions from the 1995 SOA Vancouver Meeting covers the pension actuary's role in the 'top fifty' process, the PBGC's annual list of those companies with the largest underfunding for guaranteed benefits. It also covers FAS87 and the 10k filing. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 21, No, 3a.

Description: This article discusses the affects of the Pension Protection Act of 2006 PPA primarily in relation to defined benefits pension DB plans.

Description: Updated metrics for measuring financial stress among multiemployer pension plans in the United States.

Description: Updated longitudinal study of metrics for measuring contribution adequacy at paying down unfunded liabilities in corporate DB pension plans in the U.S.

Description: This is a summary of the employer costs for pension plans published by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) as of December 2013.