Description: Abstract for a paper that attempts to identify defined benefit plan design principles that provide valuable employee benefits at reasonable costs. From The Future of Pension Plan Funding and Disclosure Monograph, M-RS05-1. Presented at The Future of Pension Plan Funding and Disclosure Symposium held July 14-15, 2005 in Washington, DC. This monograph is a case study.

Description: Paper discusses transition considerations if bond-based discount rates are used for funding public pension plans.

Description: Excel spreadsheet illustrating a specific proposal outlined in the paper, with detailed explanations.

Description: Interest rate changes and volatile equity returns have contributed to significant funding and expense volatility for defined benefit plans in recent years. This paper will describe the design of an option contract with payouts that are tied to the combined impact of interest rates and investment returns on the funding level of a defined benefit pension plan. Current derivatives used by plan sponsors can limit exposure to one of these risks; however, a derivative that combines these risks may provide more targeted protection to a plan sponsor at lower cost. This paper discusses several considerations in designing such a derivative. It will also briefly discuss pricing of the option. Finally, the difference in potential outcomes between plan funding with and without option ownership will be demonstrated. As an outcome of the design work, a new way to visualize pension risk that may be useful in sponsor accounting disclosures will be shown.

Description: This is an Excel workbook containing links to papers, articles and newsletters which are useful to the study of the principles of finance and their application to pension plans. Topics include accounting, assumptions/methods, actuarial standards, behavioral economics, design, financial economics, full funding, immunization, investments, minimum funding, market value, pension finance, PBGC, risk, and traditional defined benefit view. For each document listed in the workbook, its abstract or a short synopsis is also included to help the user choose appropriate readings.

Description: Jill Hoffman’s report on 2010 actuarial activities in Singapore and Cathy Lyn’s report on the 2009 activities in the Jamaica .

Description: View the complete issue for the August 2014 Reinsurance News newsletter.

Description: This paper examines actuarial pension models and the methodologies those models offer, and introduces a new liability concept that eliminates certain inconsistencies that exist in the models. From Current Pension Actuarial Practice in Light of Financial Economics Symposium, M-RS04-1.

Description: This paper takes the position that the most significant impact of pension funds on the U.K. economy relates to the costs imposed by extreme mismatching between their financial assets and liabilities. From Current Pension Actuarial Practice in Light of Financial Economics Symposium, M-RS04-1.

Description: This paper shows an approach whereby future asset returns and liabilities are modeled taking into account the probability of various returns. It develops an asset-smoothing approach that uses an expected return on the asset mix and averages both historical and projected asset values. From Current Pension Actuarial Practice in Light of Financial Economics Symposium, M-RS04-1.