Description: Employers and investors have suffered recently from taking too much investment risk inside their defined benefit DB plans, producing calls for more transparent accounting. Some employers have tried to eliminate this pension risk by moving to defined contribution DC plans. From Pension Section News, January 2005, Issue No. 57. However, this is not the only, or even the best, option available. From Pension Section News, January 2005, Issue No. 57.

Description: Introduction to 2012 Pension Forum covering Retirement 20/20 call for models papers. These papers outline specific ideas and designs for new retirement systems.

Description: An interview with actuary Lee Gold reveals preliminary results of a recent SOA research project which surveyed employees on what retirement plan features they prefer.

Description: While the Pension Protection Act resolved a lot of issues about how employers could fund defined benefit plans and how they could safely put 401k plans on autopilot, the legislation didn’t solve the bigger problem of making sure that all employees have enough savings for retirement, observers say. For this reason, groups of employers, actuaries, academics and industry experts have come together to introduce new plan designs that address many of the elements that the Pension Protection Act left out. This article summarizes these proposals.

Description: In this article, the author talks about the pension environment and pension plans in Germany.

Description: Designing an international pension program for mobile Employees. From The Pension Forum, January 2003, Volume 15, Issue No. 1.

Description: In this article the author responds the current defined benefit pension plan concepts that are being challenged and presents his proposal for revised plan design, funding and investment concepts. From Pension Section News, March 2004, Issue No. 54.

Description: This article discusses building new retirement systems. It references an article published in the Economist, 'Actuaries and the pensions crunch: When the spinning stops,' Jan. 26, 2006, and the stir that article created in the pension community. This article suggests that we take our understanding of the global economy, business models, shareholder expectations, employee expectations, employment risks, pre-retirement risks and the emerging retirement paradigm and create a new retirement system. From Pension Section News, April 2006, No. 61.

Description: Many retirement actuaries have experience developing, implementing, and monitoring Liability Driven Investing (LDI) strategies for plan sponsors. These strategies typically involve modifying a plan’s investment strategy to remove a significant portion of the investment and interest rate risk now or at some point in the future when specific triggers are met. The tactics often involve the use of fixed income assets to cash flow and/or duration match the liabilities. In the spirit of helping actuaries expand their roles in an evolving defined contribution world, this article explores the application of LDI and derisking strategies within defined contribution and individual retirement accounts. The economic theory behind this approach is called the lifecycle hypothesis, or lifecycle finance. The benefits of the lifecycle finance method are that it provides a safe approach to save for retirement and a secure source of floor income during retirement. Similar to pension plans, each individual has his or her own idiosyncratic needs, wants, and risks that should be considered. Actuaries are uniquely situated to help defined contribution plan sponsors, individuals, and even themselves implement the lifecycle finance approach by developing and distributing tools and methods that focus on income (rather than wealth), LDI strategies, and personalization.

Description: The traditional defined-benefit (DB) plan is a type of plan structured to provide the greatest degree of retirement income security, designed to pay out a guaranteed retirement income for the life of the retiree (and, when applicable, a beneficiary). However, over the last several decades, the number of private-sector employees covered under these traditional plans has decreased dramatically and been replaced by defined contribution (DC) plans. In contrast, public-sector retirement plans, which are exempt from ERISA, have seen a much smaller decline in DB plans. There are many differences in the private and public sector that likely contributed to this phenomenon, but ERISA and the many amendments to it has been a major factor.