Ryan ALM
Blog
ARPA - "The Almost Rescue Plan"
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) released their long-awaited American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) guidelines. They had 120 days from the time that the legislation was signed by President Biden to inform the public on how this legislation would be...
After a brief respite...
With most of the pension world expecting US interest rates to rise, the opposite has occurred and rather dramatically. US 30-year Treasury bond yields have collapsed 51 bps since May 12th, while the US 10-year Treasury note yield is down...
Creating more volatility
An interesting analysis by Deutsche Bank suggests that public pension systems should have rebalanced a greater sum of plan assets to fixed income following the terrific first quarter performance provided by US equity markets. DB's analysis found that public pension...
A guide for single-employer plans
The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) has brought many benefits to our retirement industry. I've been mostly focused on the significant impact that ARPA is likely to have on multiemployer plans, but the benefits for single-employer plans are vast, as...
Challenging the Status Quo
The following is an excerpt taken from Thomas Jefferson's letter to James Madison. It reads, “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the...
Because They Can't Afford to Wait!
I've been blessed to be in the pension/investment industry for 40 years, and I truly believe that we possess tremendous responsibility to those that we serve - mainly the plan participant. But I'm often frustrated by the fact those that...
Pension Oversight Boards
Pension Oversight Boards are getting some press recently, and in many cases the coverage is pretty negative. Many US states have adopted independent oversight boards to monitor the activities of state-sponsored defined benefit pension systems. As an example, Ohio has...
Recognizing Reality is a Good Thing!
Headline: Kentucky Teachers Retirement System adds $3 billion in unfunded liabilities to their books basically overnight. In actuality, they really didn't. What they did do was to reduce a high discount of 7.5% to a more reasonable assumption of 7.1%....
When will they become a focus?
Summer is here. It officially started at 11:30 pm (DST) on Sunday, June 20th (Happy Father's Day). Maybe that is why I'm feeling restless today and perhaps a little rambunctious. That said, I need to get something off my chest!...
Public DB Plans Should Heed Their Advice
Moody's has recently published a very balanced analysis on the current state of public pension systems. Most of the article discusses the outstanding, perhaps historic, performance results achieved during fiscal year-to-date 2020-2021. Let's hope that the last couple of weeks...