Description: Understanding U.S. defined-benefit plan annual funding notice definitions and what they are meant to represent is a key to understanding how “healthy” or “unhealthy” a pension plan is. This article offers a description of several types of funded status measurements and their applications under the rules mandated by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service to fund private employer-sponsored defined-benefit pension plans.

Description: A new mortality valuation standard, the 1994 Group Annuity Reserve Table, is being proposed for new group pension business. This article discusses the industry concerns with the change from a static table to a generational table based upon mortality improvement factors.

Description: Presented at June 1996 Spring Meeting. This session presents a summary of pension plan qualification/registration requirements for the U.S., Canada, and other countries and the means that some sponsors have used to comply with them.

Description: Feature article about the different types of retirement systems throughout the world and how watching what they do could help the U.S. retirement system.

Description: Discusses the recent changes to U.K. pensions legislation.

Description: Table of contents for Volume 1, Issue No. 2 of The Record of the Society of Actuaries. These records were taken from the New York meeting, April 17-18, 1975.

Description: Presented at June 1996 Spring Meeting. Discusses minimum pension funding rules under GATT, aka the Retirement Protection Act.

Description: Presented at October 1996 Annual Meeting. The panel will discuss retirement benefit-related legal developments of recent months, including statutes, court cases and guidance provided by the IRS, PBGC and DOL.

Description: Presented at October 1996 Annual Meeting. Now that plan sponsors are required to purchase only the “safest available” annuities, companies encounter a number of difficulties when they attempt to terminate a defined-benefit plan. This session addresses the lack of available insurers and the resulting effect on competition, a situation in which the plan sponsor may have difficulty finding any insurer to take plan benefits, the effect on prevalence of lump-sum distributions, and the role of the PBGC as insurer of last resort.

Description: Reports the comments of Chris Bone, Chair of the SOA's Retirement Systems Research Committee, on the pension funding changes tucked away in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Congress passed in December.