The asset consultant has always been tasked with a difficult assignment, as they try to secure the promises (benefits) that have been made by their client to the client's plan participants. When I first got into the pension/investment industry in...

The Butch Lewis Act that passed the U.S. House of Representatives with bipartisan support in July 2019, continues to languish within the U.S. Senate more than 12 months later. While our august Senators fiddle, the pensions of nearly 1.4 million...

At the end of each fiscal year, corporate pension plan sponsors must select a discount rate to use in valuing the liabilities of their pension plan for GAAP accounting purposes. As a result, the choice of discount rates will affect...

Like you, I read as many articles related to pensions, retirement, and savings as I can. As our retirement industry has moved from defined benefit pensions where the monthly benefit is explicit, to a defined contribution plan where the payout...

I don't like that public pension systems use the return on assets objective (ROA) to value their liabilities, but it is the accounting rules under GASB that dictate that requirement. I also don't like that public pension systems continue to...

The following graph highlights the fiscal year returns for the Mississippi Public Employees Retirement System. I would hazard a guess that this pattern differs only marginally from the "average" public pension system, since most plans continue to focus on the...

The WSJ has published an article today that highlights Wilshire's TUCS universe performance for public pension systems. The gist of the article is that public pension systems established a 22-year record for positive performance during the second quarter - great...

On January 11, 2017 I penned a blog post titled "Perpetual Doesn't Mean Sustainable", which addressed my concerns about the fact that the idea that public pension systems were perpetual might just be a fallacy. In fact, the funding status...

During June, the estimated cost to transfer retiree pension risk to an insurer rose 70 basis points, from 103.9% of a plan's total liabilities to 104.6% of those liabilities according to the Milliman Pension Buyout Index (MPBI). The historically low...

In another classic example of being out of touch with what is truly happening to American workers, US Senate Republicans have introduced a new bill: the Addressing Missed-savings Opportunities for Retirement due to an Epidemic Act (AMORE) Act. Senators Ted...