Description: R. Evan Inglis, the new chairperson of the SOA/AAA Joint Pension Finance Task Force, shares with us his view of the important pension finance issues facing actuaries and the task force’s vision of how pension finance can strengthen the actuarial profession.

Description: Musings over the evolution of the Editor role “paperless” correspondence recent changes in the Pension Section Council and its Teams SOA support of the Pension Section and a sneak peek at possible action steps in response to the survey of Pension Section members and other retirement practitioners.

Description: In this article, Pension Section Council chairperson Marcus Robertson reviews 2009, looks forward to 2010, thanks departing council members and welcomes incoming members.

Description: A global perspective on risk and pensions, from a different perspective.

Description: The appropriate role for actuaries when advising on long-term investment strategies for individual retirement savings.

Description: This essay focuses on elements of success in a system linked to employment.

Description: In this article the editor previews the issue.

Description: Andrew Vaughan served as Chair of the Defined Ambition working group in the United Kingdom. Their report summarized a variety of different approaches for different plan designs and provided insights into different ways to apply defined ambition concepts. The report was presented to Parliament. The article discusses the report and provides insights about its development.

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.