Description: The Retirement Plans Experience Committee RPEC of the Society of Actuaries SOA is a standing committee that monitors pension plan mortality experience. Most recently, the committee developed the RP-2000 mortality table. This table was the first published North American mortality table based solely upon private sector pension plan mortality experience. Previous tables developed by the RPEC such as GAR-94 and UP-94 were based primarily on a combination of group annuity, and U.S. federal employees and retirees mortality experience. From Pension Section News, April 2006, Issue No. 61.

Description: The recent release of the RP-2014 Mortality Table and Scale MP-2014 exposure drafts represent the SOA’s first comprehensive reexamination of U.S. pension-related mortality assumptions in over a decade. This paper summarizes the key conclusions reached in those exposure drafts and the estimated financial impact of adopting the new mortality assumptions.

Description: Article from Pension Section News, May 2007, No. 64, highlights a book by John Turner on international perspectives of individual accounts. In clear and concise language, Turner, a senior policy advisor at the AARP Public Policy Institute, explores the first-hand experience of other countries that have implemented, either partially or in full, aspects of social security reform that have been proposed for the U.S. system.

Description: This article reveals the results of a survey by the Pension Section Research Team showing that U.S. Social Security reform is a diverse issue for actuaries. From Pension Section News, April 2006, No. 61.

Description: This paper describes rates of disability based on recent experience under public retirement plans for U.S. Government Employees: 1988–1993. From Pension Section News, April 1998, Issue No. 36.

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: The 2006 Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation PBGC Annual Performance and Accountability Report and the 2006 Annual Report of the PBGC each contain a summary of the results of the Sept. 30, 2006 actuarial valuation. The purpose of the separate Actuarial Valuation Report is to provide greater detail concerning the valuation of future benefits than is presented in PBGC's Annual Report.

Description: This article talks about RPEC’s February 2014 release of exposure draft reports for RP-2014 base tables and the MP-2014 projection scale (for use by U.S. pension actuaries), the Canadian Institute of Actuaries (CIA) new final pension mortality tables for Canadian pension plans.

Description: RP-2000 Mortality Tables Report Executive Summary from Pension Section News, October 2000, Issue No. 44.

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.