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: This article was commissioned by the Society of Actuaries Pension Section Research Team to provide practitioners and researchers with a listing of Web sites containing information about defined benefit plans outside the United States. It also lists some non-Internet information sources. The research team’s primary motivation for the article was its belief that readily available comparative information on the pension environment in other countries, including current design and funding issues, would benefit practitioners and researchers dealing with similar issues.

Description: This article looks at our use of technology- then and now. A reprinted article from the very first Pension Section News in June 1989, written by Barbara Choyke and titled '1,100 View SOA’s First Teleconference,' is juxtaposed against a view of today’s webcast communications.

Description: The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that the virtues of “marked-to-market” pension accounting are greatly exaggerated for both public and private pension plans. It is demonstrated that the “marked-to-market” paradigm, as applied to pensions, is based on a questionable economic foundation and may produce plenty of “misinformation” of its own. From the Pension Section News, September 2008, Issue No. 68.

Description: In this article, the authors focus on the disparities for women and minorities in retirement security with emphasis on issues that may be of particular interest to actuaries. From Pension Section News, October 2011, Issue No. 75.

Description: Column highlighting the upcoming release for RP2014/MP-2014, rationale for new scales including two-dimensional mortality projection techniques and upcoming SOA educational opportunities on these topics.

Description: This article summarizes the approach taken by the Canadian Institute of Actuaries to develop mortality tables and mortality improvement scales for use in Canadian pension plans based on Canadian population data. It also summarizes the additional factors pension actuaries have to consider in using the new tables and scales.

Description: A View from the SOA's Staff Fellow for Retirement

Description: Overview of recent research and CPD sessions of interest to pension actuaries

Description: The article has formulas for calculating the geometric return of a portfolio using the arithmetic return and the variance