Plan sponsors are strategizing for growth and managing risk in a significantly different investment environment. To accomplish their goals, it is imperative that these changes be taken into consideration. By taking a fresh look at their investment strategies and plan management, organizations have an opportunity to adapt, evolve, and reap significant benefits.
Many defined benefit (DB) plan sponsors have concerns that the longer-term lockups required for private investments (PI) preclude them from taking advantage of this asset class. However, an exemption exists that allows ERISA-governed DB plans to transfer their PI programs to a separate investment pool if they need to—without liquidating them or sacrificing returns.
By changing the PPA discount rate methodology to the Full Yield Curve approach, ERISA-covered US single-employer pension plans can significantly decrease or eliminate their variable rate premiums, reduce complexity, and simplify the risk management process.
While many options exist as a result of the Special Financial Assistance (SFA) program for underfunded multiemployer pension plans, a plan-specific, holistic approach that combines multiple investment strategies is most likely to generate optimal outcomes. This paper provides a guide to plan sponsors as they seek to make the most effective use of their SFA program capital.
The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 included substantial relief funds for the most troubled US multiemployer pension plans through its Special Financial Assistance (SFA) program. This paper looks at how multiemployer plans have a unique opportunity to improve their solvency through 2051 and beyond by optimizing how they invest both SFA relief funds and their existing plan assets.
The Pension Risk Transfer (PRT) market has grown markedly over the past decade as recent regulatory changes, coupled with greater pricing competition from insurers, have increased the popularity of PRTs. However, for many plan sponsors, PRTs are not the best solution. Plan sponsors should fully understand the potential impact of a risk transfer transaction on their plan, specifically as it relates to three dimensions explored in this paper: funded status, risk reduction, and future costs. Without this understanding, the hidden cost of these transactions may go unnoticed.
While alpha is commonly recognized as a key lever in maintaining or improving funded status, it is often mistakenly limited to purely equity or lower-liquidity investment opportunities. For plan sponsors, this can be a costly misconception. Cambridge Associates’ research shows that active fixed income management can contribute valuable alpha, resulting in significant benefits to plan outcomes.
The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) was signed into law on March 11, 2021, and included a variety of plan sponsor–friendly changes to single-employer and multiemployer pension plans, but no real help for public sector plans. ARPA may change the future landscape of US pension plans, which may prompt plan sponsors to modify their investment strategies to achieve plan objectives. Its impact will vary greatly, both by plan type and individual plan circumstances.
In an era of historically low interest rates, heightened risk of yield curve steepening complicates pension risk management.
The notion that interest rates are dynamic in nature and notoriously difficult to predict has been demonstrated in spades by the uptick in market volatility during the COVID-19 pandemic. The economic impact from the virus has been swift, creating a dichotomy between “risk-free” Treasury interest rates and corporate spreads. In this paper, we outline how hedging programs may need to re-align their strategies given the current circumstances while continuing to lean on the basics.