Ryan ALM
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DB Pension Plan "Absolute Truths" Revisited
This post may be familiar to some of you, as I originally published it in October 2024. Given today's great uncertainty related to geopolitics, markets, and the economy, I thought it relevant to share once again. Please don't hesitate to...
It's Not A Product - It's A Service!
Anyone who has read my blogs (>1,700 to date) knows that my personal mission and that of Ryan ALM, Inc. is to protect and preserve defined benefit pension plans. How is our collective mission pursued? It is through the implementation...
Milliman: Corporate Pension Funding Soars
Milliman has once again released its monthly Milliman 100 Pension Funding Index (PFI), which analyzes the 100 largest U.S. corporate pension plans, and the news continues to be quite good. Market appreciation of 1.05% during January lifted the market value...
MV versus FV
There seems to be abundant confusion within certain segments of the pension industry regarding the purpose and accounting (performance) of a Cash Flow Matching (CFM) portfolio on a monthly basis. Traditional monthly reports focus on the present value (PV) of...
An Alternative Pension Funding Formula
I've spent the last few days attending and speaking at the FPPTA conference in Sawgrass, Florida. As I've reported on multiple occasions, I believe that the FPPTA does as good a job as any public fund organization of providing critical...
Actuaries of DB Pension Plans Prefer Higher Interest Rates
I produced a post yesterday, titled "U.S. Rates Likely to Fall - Here's the Good and Bad". In that blog post I wrote, "I’d recommend that you not celebrate a potential decline in rates if you are a plan sponsor...
Enhancing the Probability of Achieving the ROA
We are often confronted by plan sponsors and their advisors with the objection of using cash flow matching (CFM) because the "expected return" is lower than the plan's return on asset assumption (ROA). Given that objection, we often point out...
The Buying Of Time Can Reap Huge Rewards
When we present the list of benefits associated with using Cash Flow Matching (CFM), one of the benefits that we highlight is the buying of time a.k.a. an extended investing horizon. Our pension community tends to fall prey to short-termism...
An Element of Certainty Can Be Achieved
I've spent the last few days attending my first GAPPT conference in Braselton, GA. The conference has been terrific as the venue is beautiful, the attendees/trustees delightful, and the speakers/topics topnotch. Senior, highly experienced members of our pension community have...
FOMC and Powell Deliver Worrying Message
I produced a post recently titled, "Parallels to the 1970s? " in which I discussed the challenging economic environment that existed during the 1970s as a result of two oil shocks and some sketchy decision making on the part of...