Description: This article outlines the 2001 IRC, PBGC, Federal Income Tax, Social Security, and Medicare Amounts

Description: This article describes a simplified problem in pension plan financing and presents two questions about how it can be modeled. Answers to these questions will be discussed and their implications for traditional actuarial models will be presented in Part 2 of the article in the following issue of the newsletter.

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: This article summarizes participant responses from the Retirement Implications of Demographic and Family Change project.

Description: This article reviews the new standard of practice, ASOP 6, and its impact on the actuarial assumptions that actuaries use for valuations of retiree group medical and life benefits.

Description: An update on the Capital Market Assumptions used for asset allocation maybe useful to actuaries given the parallels with the assumptions an actuary uses to measure plan obligations.

Description: This article notes that actuaries can play a crucial role in assisting the couple, the attorney's and the human resources professional in alleviating headaches spawned by QDROs and provides simple steps to follow to minimize complexity, thereby saving legal and consulting fees for the divorcing couple and easing their stress.

Description: This article analyzes and confirms the circumstances where a change in the mortality assumption does and does not have a significant impact on pension valuations.

Description: This article summarizes the focus of the inaugural The Pension Conference which is the difficult investment environment for pension plans and the increased choice and competition that accompany that environment.

Description: An excerpt from the 2002 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Funds which describes the basic methodology and assumptions used in the estimates for the intermediate assumptions. Also, projections of program costs are presented under two alternate sets of assumptions.