Description: Capital Market Assumptions—The Past Performance Future Returns Debate by Jane Arnold and Jennifer Donnelly from Pension Section News, November 1998, Issue No. 38.

Description: This is a summary of a new research paper entitled: “Determining Discount Rates Required to Fund Defined Benefit Plans” by John Turner and three other economists, which describes a new way to look at pension funding for ongoing plans that is a variant of using expected returns (currently used in public plans) that takes into account the risk that contributions will be needed in the future for this year’s benefit accruals.

Description: This article summarizes the approach taken by the Canadian Institute of Actuaries to develop mortality tables and mortality improvement scales for use in Canadian pension plans based on Canadian population data. It also summarizes the additional factors pension actuaries have to consider in using the new tables and scales.

Description: Measuring the Rate of Retirement in an Interval Beginning with an Eligibility Change Point by William H. Blake, Jr. from Pension Section News, January 1998, Issue No. 35.

Description: This is an essay on the measurement of the reasonableness of each individual non-economic actuarial assumption. From the Pension Section News, September 2008, Issue No. 68.

Description: This paper is a follow-up to the papers in the January and April 2005 editions of the Pension Forum, which focused on the interest assumptions to be used in pension funding. This paper focuses on the other assumptions used to calculate pension liabilities—mortality, early retirement and expense. From Pension Section News, April 2006, No. 61.

Description: This article discusses that mortality tables should reflect improving mortality. The Group Annuity Mortality table GAM-83 is probably the most common table used by pension actuaries—75 percent of the plans in Watson Wyatt’s “2003 Survey of Actuarial Assumptions and Funding” use GAM-83 for funding calculations. However, there are three more recently published tables that warrant consideration for use in pension valuations: UP-94, GAM-94 and RP-2000. From Pension Section News, January 2006, No. 60.

Description: Part 2 of an article which presents simplified problem and and presented alternate models. Answers are presented in this article. The author's final question is: If traditional actuarial models stumble over these issues, can we get it right for real world funding pension plans and funding practices?

Description: Kevin Binder, chair of the Pension Section Research Team, shares a summary of two recently completed projects that are now posted on the SOA website.The first topic is on the drawing down of retirement savings and the second is on the valuation of pension plan embedded options. From Pension Section News, October 2011, Issue No. 75.