Description: Metrics for measuring pension plan contributions against benchmarks for achieving specific financial funding goals.

Description: These notes are a follow-up to the paper 'Introduction to the Dynamics of Pension Funding' by the same authors and published in Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1976, Vol. 28. The purpose of that paper was to provide an introduction to mathematical principles applicable to pension funding under dynamic conditions of population growth, inflation, and automatic adjustment of benefits. The first note discusses a general contribution formula and a number of special cases and modifications. The second note concerns aggregate cost funding when the actuary uses assumptions about cost factors which differ consistently from cost experience. The final note concerns the variation of the annuity unit under a variable annuity program patterned after the plan employed by the College Retirement Equities Fund [CREF]. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1981, Vol. 1.

Description: Updated study of metrics for measuring stress imposed on US multiemployer pension plans by unfunded liabilities and declining numbers of active participants

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

Description: Study of the impact of IRS proposed mortality tables on private sector pension plan costs, including liabilities, contributions and PBGC premiums.

Description: This paper develops a simplified model for a pension fund, both deterministic and stochastic versions are presented. The probability distribution of the fund is derived incorporating the claims distribution and other parameters. Expected value and the variance of the fund are derived. Modifications required for the model when the interest rate is a moving average process are developed. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1998 Vol. 2.

Description: In this paper the author shows that the aggregate claims distribution of a portfolio modeled by a mix of the individual and collective models can be obtained with a single recursion under some conditions. He discusses why the collective model is not necessarily an approximation of the individual model in the context of pension funds, for example. An application to a Swiss pension fund is presented. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 2003, Vol. 1.

Description: The purpose of this report is to describe our modified approach, provide our rationale, and identify as best we can the alternatives put forward by actuaries who do not share our views.

Description: In response to public inquiries into the indexing of pension plan benefits, the financing of defined-benefit plans with fully indexed benefits is explored. A model career-average pension plan is set up with all accrued benefits fully indexed. For different funding conditions, the changes in pension plan surplus are examined under the economic conditions of 1946-1987. The results show that the fluctuations in surplus can be more easily absorbed if the pension plan balance sheet uses market value of assets and a funding objective which is flexibly related to assets and set in terms of a fixed conventional liability and an asset fluctuation reserve. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1992, Vol. 44.

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.