Description: The 2020 ERISA Advisory Council of the Department of Labor had a project on Considerations for Recognizing and Addressing Participants with Diminished Capacity. I delivered testimony to the ERSIA Advisory Council on this topic in September 2020. This article summarizes some key points from the testimony and also offers ideas for how employers can help employees and retirees deal with these issues. There are two different audiences that employers deal with as a result of diminished capacity – the individuals whose capacity is diminished, and those who help them.

Description: Many retirement actuaries have experience developing, implementing, and monitoring Liability Driven Investing (LDI) strategies for plan sponsors. These strategies typically involve modifying a plan’s investment strategy to remove a significant portion of the investment and interest rate risk now or at some point in the future when specific triggers are met. The tactics often involve the use of fixed income assets to cash flow and/or duration match the liabilities. In the spirit of helping actuaries expand their roles in an evolving defined contribution world, this article explores the application of LDI and derisking strategies within defined contribution and individual retirement accounts. The economic theory behind this approach is called the lifecycle hypothesis, or lifecycle finance. The benefits of the lifecycle finance method are that it provides a safe approach to save for retirement and a secure source of floor income during retirement. Similar to pension plans, each individual has his or her own idiosyncratic needs, wants, and risks that should be considered. Actuaries are uniquely situated to help defined contribution plan sponsors, individuals, and even themselves implement the lifecycle finance approach by developing and distributing tools and methods that focus on income (rather than wealth), LDI strategies, and personalization.

Description: The SOA and the CIA are pleased to make available a research report assessing the impact of Canadian Pension Plan (CPP) enhancements.

Description: This paper presents a multi-state stochastic model for analyzing continuing care retirement community CCRC populations. The model considers CCRCs with a number of independent living units and a skilled nursing facility. Residents may transfer temporarily or permanently to this facility. It is assumed that units vacated by deaths, withdrawals or permanent transfers are immediately occupied by new residents. Transfers are modeled using a time-homogeneous Markov process. The paper provides some probabilistic results and some numerical results obtained using this model. Some important generalizations of the model are also briefly discussed.

Description: Provides an overview of several EBRI studies on spending by older Americans and brings together with Society of Actuaries research on shocks in retirement.

Description: This paper suggests a possible framework for the mandatory annuitization of U.S. retirement savings, considers the experience of other countries and analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of mandatory annuitization.

Description: The Aging and Retirement Strategic Research Program is pleased to make available a report summarizing the research phase of a multi-phase project leading to publication of a Conversation Guide to plan for changes in financial capacity and decision-making.

Description: This report provides a framework of analyses and methods that can be use to compare and assess strategies for developing lifetime retirement income.

Description: Read the June 2019 issue of Retirement Section News published by the Retirement Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: This research report summarizes current research on retirement adequacy and compares different measures.