Description: Introduction and overview. From The Future of Pension Plan Funding and Disclosure Monograph, M-RS05-1.

Description: Article discusses proposal in Congress to extend the time for companies to fully fund their pension plans.

Description: A frustrating aspect of pension funding rules for U.S. plan sponsors is that contribution requirements are adversely correlated with business cycles. For example, not only did plan sponsors get hit with large contribution requirements in the perfect storm of the early 2000s, but many sponsors were prohibited from contributing in the late 1990s boom due to full funding limitations. This paper proposes that plan sponsors be allowed to contribute the normal cost as a deductible contribution each year. In hindsight, this would have allowed plan sponsors to pay for benefits as they accrued in the late 1990s and ultimately mitigated some of the crash of the early 2000s. The authors aim to demonstrate that a contribution policy allowing contributions to be at least equal to the normal cost will result in less volatility of contributions and improve the funded status over time.

Description: This is the abstract of a paper that analyzes the effects on the funding and the contribution rate in hybrid pension schemes when the only source of unpredictable experience is through volatile rates of return.

Description: This paper proposes principles to serve as the basis for revising the pension funding rules established in 1974, and also suggests a set of revised rules. From Current Pension Actuarial Practice in Light of Financial Economics Symposium, M-RS04-1.

Description: This article gives a Canadian actuary's perspective about the role an actuary has in determining a pension plan's funding level.

Description: This article discusses plans and processes for adequate funding for pension plans.

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: Pension Forecasts, Part II: The Model Has No Clothes by Lawrence N. Bader from Risks and Rewards Newsletter, July 2001, Issue No. 37.

Description: Diminished equity returns and historically low levels of interest rates are compelling plan sponsors to look at new ways of fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities. In response, new frontiers in asset/liability management have arisen. This article will discuss strategies aimed at reducing the volatility of pension expense and decreasing the likelihood of significant funding deficits, all without increasing pension contribution rates. From Risks and Rewards Newsletter, August 2005, Issue No. 47.