Description: Column describing shifting paradigm for retirement plan design in North America that highlights recent SOA research project on Target Benefit Plans.

Description: Article from Pension Section News, May 2007, No. 64, discusses the expectations of a pension plan. When people get what they expect, they are happy. When people do not get what they expect, they get upset. A lot of Americans are upset today with their retirement plans. The Financial Accounting Standards Board FASB and Congress are taking action, but their actions may create more problems than they solve. Underlying everything is a substantial disconnect between rule-makers and the public. The public has a more simplistic view of a retirement plan than rule-makers do. Rule-makers need to keep in mind the simplistic way ordinary people think of a retirement plan.

Description: May 2016 issue of Pension Section News

Description: The author encourages the use of sound actuarial principles to develop reasonable retirement spending budgets instead of rule of thumb approaches commonly used.

Description: A Discussion of why female mortality is higher than male mortality at higher ages.

Description: The article endorses broader use of lifetime income in DC plans. It explains why the use of DB plans will continue to decline. The article points out that plans sponsors will not willingly take on additional ERISA fiduciary exposure. The article endorses three regulatory reforms that would increase the use of lifetime income in DC plans. 1. A robust annuity issuer safe harbor that would free employers from fiduciary exposure for putting an annuity provider on the DC platform. 2. A requirement that a plan offer a lifetime income option to qualify for the 404(c) safe harbor. 3. A revision to 404(c) to allow plan sponsors to allocate part or all of the employer match to lifetime income.

Description: The article compares the return characteristics, return, volatility, and correlation, to that of other possible selections as a DC safe option. It concludes that stable value is pareto superior to all other safe option candidates, and is therefore the optimal safe option.

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: Discusses the Canadian Institute of Actuaries report on whether the normal retirement age in Canadian social security programs and private programs should be increased and possible impacts.

Description: Discussion of the merits of solvency versus going concern funding targets for pension plans, and the connection with different risk-sharing deals.