Description: Pension accounting standards continue to evolve across the globe with objectives, methods and assumptions varying, sometimes substantially, from one jurisdiction to the next. The presenters will compare the primary global pension accounting standards (US GAAP and IFRS), review recent developments and address whether or not the current standards adequately serve stakeholders such as plan participants, investors, management and regulators.

Description: This report is an update to a 2014 paper related to changes in the continually evolving pension risk transfer landscape. This updated report seeks to discuss pension risk transfer in depth and identify key de-risking actions, alternatives and triggers that impact pension risk transfer strategies.

Description: This article provides an overview and highlights of the recent paper Pension Risk Transfer: Evaluating Impact and Barriers for De-Risking Strategies. The market has evolved dramatically over the past 10 years, and the paper discusses the drivers behind these changes from both the plan sponsor and insurer viewpoints. The research also gathered input from various key stakeholders as to what changes the market could experience in the future.

Description: This session will highlight the mortality experience of a large set of private pension plans in the United States for experience years 2010-2014.

Description: Explore the use of conjoint analysis to understand what employees say they want and/or need in a retirement plan in newly released research material sponsored by the SOA’s Retirement Section. Retirement plans of the past were defined as a benefit or a defined contribution in nature with their attendant features. As today’s hybrid plan designs consider features of the two historical archetypes, this research methodology identifies which features of a retirement program are most important to employees. This research, coming from the SOA’s Aging and Retirement Strategic Research program, includes a tool for testing preferences for different combinations of features by different demographic groups (age, income, gender, race/ethnicity, etc.) By attending the webcast, you will be able to understand: What conjoint analysis is and how it works. Which features of retirement programs are most important to employees. How to use a tool to compare the importance of features for different demographic groups. How to use a tool to compare the level of acceptance of different retirement packages for various demographic groups. Come look at alternative plan designs (either inside or outside of what is possible today) to better understand how employees in different situations are likely to respond to the design combinations.