Description: The Society of Actuaries and the Retirement Income Institute, a project of the Alliance for Lifetime Income, are partnering to explore ideas and thoughts on identifying current and alternative means of achieving and measuring retirement income adequacy. In issuing this call for essays, the organizations aim to gather perspectives, opinions and data on how to advance the state of effective retirement planning to assist individuals, actuaries, financial advisors, employers and other stakeholders.

Description: The Society of Actuaries is committed to fostering a more inclusive and diverse environment in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world for members, candidates and customers wherever they live. An important aspect of this commitment is dedicated research that the Society of Actuaries has sponsored to further advance this effort. Explore diversity, equity and inclusion issues from the aspect of retirement preparedness and other aging issues. Results from a recently released research report and author's views from an invitation to write essays on these issues will be presented with an opportunity for audience suggestions for future work.

Description: Required Minimum Distributions are the minimum amounts that a retiree must withdraw from their qualified pensions. The Secure Act made major changes to the rules surrounding RMDs, updating the Life Expectancy and Distribution Period Tables. In this joint-sponsored session of the Retirement and Taxation sections, the changes in these rules will be discussed. Focus on their impact to the retirees, the amount and timing of their distributions, and the retiree's potential tax ramifications.

Description: The Society of Actuaries, in conjunction with the Canadian Institute of Actuaries, recently commissioned a research project on Benefits at Risk and Jean-Francois Begin is conducting the research. Prepare to review Professor Begin's findings and review other work related to determining capital adequacy for benefits payable in non-insured pension payout schemes. This session will be of interest to actuaries working with non-insured defined contribution solutions and to actuaries working in trusteed defined benefit pension plans.

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_O2_v2018 model found here utilizes the same projection methodology underpinning the RPEC_2014 model except that the historical rates have been developed using “order-2” Whittaker-Henderson graduation rather than “order-3”.

Description: This study explores whether public pension plans have contributed enough to reduce unfunded liabilities, absent other influences such as investment returns.

Description: Investing for retirement in other countries is different from investing for retirement in the U.S. and Canada. In developing countries, there are fewer investment opportunities and domestic markets are smaller and less liquid. National retirement systems may be established in part to support government debt issuance and to help develop domestic capital markets. Investment policy objectives tend to evolve over time as a country and its retirement system(s) develop together. Come broaden your horizons by painting a picture of a different investment paradigm than you are used to using examples from many countries around the world.

Description: This research will provide detailed insights into the risk factors that drive U.S. public-sector pension plan mortality experience. The public-sector pension plan mortality experience collected for this research will be aggregated, de-identified, and made available for further analysis. In addition, mortality tables based on this public-sector pension plan experience will be developed for use in the valuation and risk management of public-sector pension plans.

Description: Despite its significance, longevity risk in the U.S. market has historically received fairly little attention, especially in international comparison, but the tide seems to be turning.