Authored by: Greg Meila

A Balancing Act: Strategies for Financial Executives in Managing Pension Risk

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As pressures on pensions mount, we believe financial executives are best served by re-evaluating major decisions in terms of the true tools at their disposal. In this paper we review four levers that are fundamental drivers of pension costs and outcomes: asset returns, liability hedging, contribution policy, and benefit management. Balancing these levers is critical to enabling greater probability of success in managing pension risk, and we introduce a framework for chief financial officers and other financial executives to use in doing so.

Thought Mortality Was Dead? Considerations for Pensions Given the IRS’s Delay in Implementing RP-2014

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The IRS’s somewhat unexpected decision to delay implementation of the RP-2014 mortality tables has impacted at least three separate aspects of pension plan strategy: calculating minimum contribution requirements; determining variable-rate PBGC premiums; and valuing lump-sum distributions to be paid out to terminated vested participants. This brief discusses what has changed and provides general considerations for all sponsors to weigh in the near term.

MAPping the Future of Pension Funding

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On August 8, President Obama signed the Highway and Transportation Funding Act of 2014 (HATFA-14) into law, thereby temporarily maintaining the solvency of the Highway Trust Fund. Approximately two-thirds of the financing for the law came not from transportation-related sources, but rather from an extension of the relief granted in 2012 to single-employer pension funds…