Description: This article discusses the risk of declining market cap with large pension obligations and focuses on the pension risk from the standpoint of different companies. Specifically, we’ll examine risk based on the relative size of the pension obligation to the market capitalization of the plan sponsor. From Pension Section News, September 2006, No. 62.

Description: Sponsors of DB plans are being forced to focus on their plans as never before. A confluence of events—market downturn, aging workforce and changing legislation/regulation—has meant the status quo no longer applies to companies’ DB plans.

Description: Response to David Kausch’s comments on the paper.

Description: This article discusses some of the ideas of pension finance, how to present such information, and how it was presented to the New York City Retirement Systems (NYCRS) in a way that made it available to other interested parties, including the public.

Description: Interview with Sudipto Banerjee

Description: Anna Rappaport provides her usual highly-stimulating and thought-provoking summaries of ideas that she has heard and generated during some of her most recent expeditions to various Conferences, Meetings, Roundtables, Symposia and Retreats that deal with a wide variety of retirement and old age security related issues.

Description: The Pension Forum is for the publication of papers on pension-related topics and discussions of those papers. It is published on an ad hoc basis by the Pension Section of the Society of Actuaries, and delivered to Pension Section members free of charge.

Description: Argues that most retirees face multiple financial risks that need to be considered simultaneously so that limited resources can be applied in a manner that is rational and satisfying. A specific procedure for developing such an individualized risk strategy is described.

Description: This essay explores the role that the emerging defined contribution retirement system may be playing in the growth of wealth inequality in the United States. The current system leaves many Americans with little or no retirement savings. Those with higher accumulation levels appear to invest proportionally more in equities, which may have an exponential effect of balances over long time periods. The author hypothesizes that willingness to take investment risk involves the relationship between the amount an investor has accumulated and what she/he needs in order to cover basic costs of living. This is one reason that investors with greater accumulation levels may be able to earn higher rates of return. The essay concludes by suggesting that the U.S. defined contribution system should include all workers and provide additional fiduciary guidance. Examples reforms, both in the U.S. and other countries, are provided.

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.