Description: This research report, based on Ontario pension plan data, examines differences between going concern and solvency valuations.

Description: The SOA Research Institute seeks proposals and essays on actuarial aspects of 401(k) plans, including similar plans like 403(b) and 457. Topics include investment impact, participant behavior, plan features, and AI's role. Submissions aim to enhance understanding and future research on retirement savings adequacy and system improvements.

Description: As we step out of a historical pandemic that put words like life expectancy and mortality rate on everyone's vocabulary, we suffer some measure of intellectual PTSD. This dark period magnifies our cognitive bias as we try to understand future mortality, a key variable both for life insurance and pension plans. Does our propensity to quantify and the attractiveness of new predictive modeling tools cloud our judgment? Check out a reflection framework and insights on scientific discoveries that will allow you to develop plausible scenarios that will enrich your thought process. The panelist will start by presenting what is new when we think about future mortality. We will then facilitate the generation of plausible scenarios by the audience and explain how we evaluate them. There will be no answers, but the relevance of your mortality questions will definitely improve.

Description: The Society of Actuaries (SOA) Research Institute's Aging and Retirement Strategic Research Program has released a collection of essays addressing the impact of inflation on retirement and retirement-related issues. Join us as we explore the content of these essays and other findings from the ongoing SOA research project about inflation and retirement.

Description: This research provides insights and recommendations to optimize and enhance the long-term sustainability and effectiveness of China's pension system.

Description: Based on work performed by Bob Howard, a former member of RPEC, the SOA developed a spreadsheet-based program that allows users to create a customized mortality improvement scale using the RPEC_2014 model. The RPEC_2014_v2018 model found here is a new version of the tool updated by the SOA and RPEC to reflect historical U.S. mortality experience through 2016. The tool can be used to model different assumption sets while utilizing the same methodology underpinning the development of Scale MP-2018.

Description: Collective Defined Contribution Plans offer an option in plan design that lies somewhere between defined benefit and defined contribution plans. This is achieved by fixing the contributions to the plan, but allowing benefits to fluctuate based on experience. This article provides a basic summary of how they can be structured. There are limitations to their use in the US, but are gaining in popularity elsewhere around the globe.

Description: The article is an interview with Barbara Hogg who summarizes the results of a survey of Americans about their awareness of financial risks faced in retirement and how they are managing those risks. The survey was commissioned by the SOA and is the 11th iteration of such a survey.

Description: Defined benefit plans have been disappearing from the private sector retirement program landscape. 401k Plans that have taken their place are not designed to provide retiree lifetime income. Individuals seldom work for a single employer and thus have many retirement accounts spread about. This commentary discusses an alternative approach to providing retirement income a voluntary basis in a vehicle that is decoupled from employers.

Description: This is an article from The Actuary that discusses the need to reform defined benefit plans. The number of defined benefit plans in the United States has declined significantly over the past 20 years. If Congress overlooks the interests of plan sponsors in its reform, we're likely to witness further erosion of an already weakened defined benefit system, and America's workers would be the ultimate losers.