Ryan ALM

Blog

Uncategorized Russ Kamp Uncategorized Russ Kamp

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...

Read More
Uncategorized Russ Kamp Uncategorized Russ Kamp

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...

Read More
Uncategorized Russ Kamp Uncategorized Russ Kamp

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...

Read More
Uncategorized Russ Kamp Uncategorized Russ Kamp

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...

Read More
Uncategorized Russ Kamp Uncategorized Russ Kamp

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...

Read More
Uncategorized Russ Kamp Uncategorized Russ Kamp

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...

Read More
Uncategorized Russ Kamp Uncategorized Russ Kamp

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%....

Read More
Uncategorized Russ Kamp Uncategorized Russ Kamp

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!...

Read More
Uncategorized Russ Kamp Uncategorized Russ Kamp

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...

Read More