Description: This paper examines how the cash balance plan design is related to the normal cost and accrued liability in the various actuarial cost methods, as well as the interaction of the economic assumptions in the valuation. The analysis will show that the traditional cost methods may understate the actual liability. The paper also presents an alternative cost method, along with its advantages and disadvantages. From Cash Balance Symposium Monograph, M-RS02-3.

Description: This paper provides some background about demography, health and retirement summarizes how current pension laws influence the design of pension plans and the timing of retirement and looks at the optimal retirement age from the perspective of employers, government and workers.

Description: This paper demonstrates that cash balance plans should invest all of their assets in taxable fixed-income securities and credit employee account balances with the total return on an equity index. From Cash Balance Symposium Monograph, M-RS02-3.

Description: The methods of pension funding are generally understood, but references in the actuarial literature are rather sparse. This paper attempt, in some measure, to get at least the fundamentals of pension funding into the actuarial literature. From Society of Actuaries 50th Anniversary Monograph, M-AV99-1.

Description: Summary of the papers presented at the symposium

Description: The specific aim of the proposed research is to both theoretically and empirically catalog the different ways one could expect consumption in a household after retirement to be different than consumption before retirement. The long term goal of this research is to help better inform best practices for financial planners, professionals and educators in the construction of financially prudent retirement plans. This decomposition can be separated generally into three main paradigms. The first two of these paradigms concern how preferences affect consumption before and during retirement, while the third is concerned with the financial constraints retirement brings.

Description: This paper examines the history, reasons, and impact of the shift from traditional defined benefit plans to hybrid plans. Also discussed are the need for good communication, and for further regulation. From Cash Balance Symposium Monograph, M-RS02-3.

Description: This paper examines some of the issues threatening the current health of the Social Security System, and how all or part of the system could be replaced by a cash balance plan. From Cash Balance Symposium Monograph, M-RS02-3.