Pension plan solvency and extreme market movements: a regime switching approach

We develop and test a new approach to assess defined benefit (DB) pension plan solvency risk in the presence of extreme market movements. Our method captures both the ‘fat-tailed’ nature of asset returns and their correlation with discount rate changes. We show that the standard assumption of constant discount rates leads to dramatic underestimation of future projections of pension plan solvency risk. Failing to incorporate leptokurtosis into asset returns also leads to downward biased estimates of risk, but this is less pronounced than the time-varying discount rate effect. Further modifying the model to capture the correlation between asset returns and the discount rate provides additional improvements in the projection of future pension plan solvency. This reduces the perceived future risk of underfunding because of the negative correlation between interest rate changes and asset returns. These results have important implications for those with responsibility for balancing risk against expected return when seeking to improve the current poor funding positions of DB pension schemes.     

Do Managers of U.S. Defined Benefit Pension Plan Sponsors Use Regulatory Freedom Strategically?

We use historical particularities of pension funding law to investigate whether managers of U.S. corporate defined benefit pension plan sponsors strategically use regulatory freedom to lower the reported value of pension liabilities, and hence required cash contributions. For some years, pension plans were required to estimate two liabilities—one with mandated discount rates and mortality assumptions, and another where these could be chosen freely. Using a sample of 11,963 plans, we find that the regulated liability exceeds the unregulated measure by 10% and the difference further increases for underfunded pension plans. Underfunded plans tend to assume substantially higher discount rates and lower life expectancy. The effect persists both in the cross‐section of plans and over time and it serves to reduce cash contributions. We further show that plan sponsor managers use the freed‐up cash for corporate investment and that credit risk is unlikely to explain the finding.     

Determinants of Actuarial Valuation Method Changes for Pension Funding and Reporting: Evidence from the UK

This study examines various factors that potentially explain cross‐sectional variations in UK corporate managerial discretion to switch towards a market‐based actuarial pension valuation method for pension funding and reporting purposes. Evidence is based on accounting, actuarial and share market data for an industry‐matched pair sample of 90 UK firms. Consistent with our hypotheses we find that companies have a greater propensity to switch actuarial methods if they use lower discount rates, lower flow funding ratios and sponsor larger pension plans in the pre‐switch valuation year. These findings are consistent with the traditional perspective, which implies that UK corporate switching decisions are explained by characteristics of their defined benefit pension funds. The results run contrary to the findings of earlier US based studies that find that such choices can be explained from an alternative corporate financial perspective.     

The effect of fiscal stress and balanced budget requirements on the funding and measurement of state pension obligations

We examine the extent to which fiscal stress and state balanced budget restrictions affect the funding of state public employee retirement systems. Our results indicate a negative relation between pension funding levels and measures of both: (a) state fiscal stress and (b) the existence of balanced budget requirements. Our finding that fiscally stressed states meet balanced budget requirements through reduced funding of pensions raises public policy concerns over the fiscal integrity of employee pension funds in the public sector and the effectiveness of balanced budget requirements. Additionally, we find evidence that choice of pension discount rate is associated with states’ fiscal condition and the requirement to balance the budget. Our findings are consistent with the proposition that fiscally stressed states that are required to balance their budgets both underfund their pensions and select discount rates which obscure the underfunding.     

The role of specialists in financial reporting: Evidence from pension accounting

The increasing use in financial reporting of estimates prepared by specialists has raised questions on the role these specialists play in financial reporting quality. In the setting of defined-benefit pension accounting—where the pension actuary is involved as a specialist—I examine whether pension sponsors with strong incentives to improve reported funding status pressure their actuaries for aggressive (obligation-reducing) assumptions. Among these sponsors, I find that those that are economically important clients of their actuaries use more aggressive discount rates than less important clients of the same actuary. Sponsors incentivized to inflate reported funding status but constrained from doing so also tend to seek out new actuaries. Discount rates become more aggressive after switches. These findings suggest that specialists are used to facilitate aggressive reporting. They also indicate that auditors—who are charged with evaluating specialists’ independence before relying on their work—may have difficulty implementing this guidance in practice.     

Pension return assumptions and shareholder-employee risk-shifting

Firm managers of defined-benefit (DB) pension plan sponsors reveal their primary motives — risk-shifting or risk-management — through their assumed expected rates of return (ERRs) on the plan assets. Managers with risk-shifting motives choose high ERRs to exploit flexible internal financing from employees via pension underfunding. Those with risk-management motives choose low ERRs to reduce future cash-flow uncertainty by improving the pension funding status. We examine if ERRs predict the firms’ future cash-flow allocation between pension funding and corporate investments, in a Japanese sample that mitigates the selection bias concern for US DB plan sponsors. Using dynamic panel regressions that control for lagged dependent variables, firms’ business prospects, and unobserved fixed effects, we show that higher ERRs precede higher capital investments, R&D expenses, and net pension obligations while revealing managerial aggression, especially among firms with high external financing costs. Higher ERRs predict higher market-to-book ratios for the firms with larger R&Ds and/or underfunding, suggesting that the risk-shifting channel of internal financing with high ERRs can help alleviate underinvestment problems.     

西方养老金最优化管理研究综述

养老金管理作为保险精算、金融数学的重要研究内容得到了广泛关注,特别是老龄化严重或正趋于老龄化的国家,更应重视养老金的管理。基于对DB型养老金、DC型养老金及其相关问题的现有研究成果进行系统梳理,分析讨论了西方养老金最优化管理的发展历史、研究现状及存在的问题,并据此提出未来可能的研究方向,希望能对相关研究者和保险企业提供...     

我国城镇养老保险去身份化演进

本文以参保人身份为主线,梳理了我国城镇养老保险去身份化演进历程,研究发现城镇职工养老保险去身份化实现了不同所有制身份覆盖范围一体化、保障水平趋同化以及社会统筹一体化,职工和干部养老保险因去身份化进程滞后导致养老保险出现社会化与单位化、部分积累制与现收现付、保障水平以及养老金调整机制等方面的分割。     

Investment and Financing Constraints: Evidence from the Funding of Corporate Pension Plans

I exploit sharply nonlinear funding rules for defined benefit pension plans in order to identify the dependence of corporate investment on internal financial resources in a large sample. Capital expenditures decline with mandatory contributions to DB pension plans, even when controlling for correlations between the pension funding status itself and the firm's unobserved investment opportunities. The effect is particularly evident among firms that face financing constraints based on observable variables such as credit ratings. Investment also displays strong negative correlations with the part of mandatory contributions resulting solely from unexpected asset market movements.     

Do pension buyouts help or hurt employees (retirees)?

This article compares expected pension default losses of employees and retirees before and after pension buyouts. The comparisons are made using a stochastic model calibrated with market data. The analysis shows that the lower protection level provided by the State Guarantee Association relative to that of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) is a critical factor that explains the welfare reduction, or equivalently, larger expected pension default losses, of most retirees who become annuity holders in the buyouts. The analysis also shows that the employee welfare, or equivalently expected pension default gains or losses, depends on the continued PBGC protection and, critically, their employers' postbuyout default risk and pension funding status. Moreover, these employee welfare changes are quite different for the corporations included in this analysis. Our results suggest that welfare improvements depend on the PBGC and state insurance regulators' cooperation in protecting pension participants and supervising buyout insurers.     

The Effect of Regulations on Pension Risk Shifting: Evidence from the US and Europe

This paper provides evidence that pension regulations can incentivize or curb risk shifting in the investment of defined benefit plan assets. We document that in the US, where the pension insurance premium charged by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is largely flat, financially distressed firms with severely underfunded plans shift pension investment risk. We further find that risk shifting is mitigated in the UK after the implementation of risk‐adjusted pension insurance premiums, and in the Netherlands where full pension funding is mandatory. Overall the results in this paper lend support to the view that structural flaws in the US statutory pension insurance scheme incentivize high‐risk sponsors to gamble their pension assets when distress terminations of their plans become foreseeable.     

The Association between Board Composition and Corporate Pension Policies

This study examines the role of board composition in the determination of pension policies. The results suggest that the proportion of outside directors serving on the board is positively related with pension plan funding levels. In addition, the proportion of outside directors mitigates the relation between financial distress risk and plan underfunding. Last, as firms approach distress, boards with a greater proportion of outside directors tend to allocate a lower fraction of plan assets to riskier securities. Together, our findings suggest that outside directors are mindful of their obligations toward pension plan beneficiaries.     

Discretion in accounting for pensions under IAS 19: using the ‘magic telescope’?

We use a panel data set of UK-listed companies over the period 2005–2009 to analyse the actuarial assumptions used to value pension plan liabilities under IAS 19. The valuation process requires companies to make assumptions about financial and demographic variables, notably discount rate, price inflation, salary inflation and mortality/life expectancy of plan members/beneficiaries. We use regression analysis to analyse the relationships between these key assumptions (except mortality, where disclosures are limited) and company-specific factors such as the pension plan funding position and duration of pension liabilities. We find evidence of selective ‘management’ of the three assumptions investigated, although the nature of this appears to differ from the findings of US authors. We conclude that IAS 19 does not prevent the use of managerial discretion, particularly by companies whose pension plan funding positions are weak, thereby reducing the representational faithfulness of the reported pension figures. We also highlight that the degree of discretion used reflects the extent to which IAS 19 defines how the assumptions are to be determined. We therefore suggest that companies should be encouraged to justify more explicitly their choice of assumptions.     

Valuation of an early exercise defined benefit underpin hybrid pension

In this paper, we consider three types of embedded options in pension benefit design. The first is the Florida second election (FSE) option, which has been offered to public employees in the state of Florida since 2002. The state runs both defined contribution (DC) and defined benefit (DB) pension plans. Employees who initially join the DC plan have the option to convert to the (DB) plan at a time of their choosing. The cost of the switch is assessed in terms of the ABO (Accrued Benefit Obligation), which is the expected present value of the accrued DB pension at the time of the switch. If the ABO is greater than the DC account, the employee is required to fund the difference. The second is the DB Underpin option, also known as a ‘floor offset’ or a ‘Greater-of-benefit’ plan, under which the employee participates in a DC plan, but with a guaranteed minimum benefit based on a traditional DB formula. The third option can be considered a variation on each of the first two. We remove the requirement from the FSE option for employees to fund any shortfall at the switching date. The resulting plan is similar to the DB underpin, but with the possibility of early exercise. We adopt an arbitrage-free pricing methodology to value each option. We analyse and value the optimal switching strategy for the employee by constructing an exercise frontier, and we illustrate numerically the difference between the FSE, DB Underpin and Early Exercise DB Underpin options.     

The Information Content of Corporate Pension Funding Status in Japan

This paper tests if a firm's pension funding ratio (pension assets/PBO) reveals the management's private information about the firm's operation when the firm can exercise discretion in pension funding. The lax enforcement of pension funding rules and the prevalence of management forecasts make Japanese firms an ideal testing ground. We show that, among firms with large business uncertainty, large accruals, or high effective tax rates, the pension funding ratio predicts the firm's management forecast errors significantly beyond conventional control variable and the effects of pension accounting management. However, the stock market does not appear to incorporate this information immediately.     

How does the Funding Status of Defined Benefit Pension Plans Affect Investment Decisions of Firms in the United States?

We investigate whether the flexibility in making contributions towards defined benefit pension plans sponsored by firms in the United States allows managers to save cash and increase investments. Firms invest more at higher levels of pension deficit, defined as pension benefit obligations less pension assets, and scaled by total assets. At the median level (90^th percentile) of pension deficit, investments increase by 6.7 cents (9.4 cents) for every dollar increase in cash. As the pension deficit increases, firms deviate more from the predicted level of investment. These findings suggest that the incremental investments are more likely to represent overinvestment by managers. Our results are robust to alternative model specifications and endogeneity concerns that may arise if investments are jointly determined with the funding policy of pension plans and the firm's target cash level. We repeat our main analysis for the United Kingdom and also find for that country that, at a fixed cash level, total investment increases as pension deficit increases.     

Pension plan accounting estimates and the freezing of defined benefit pension plans

This study provides evidence that, when “hard” freezing their defined benefit pension plans, employers select downward biased accounting assumptions to exaggerate the economic burden of their benefit plans. Downward biased expected rates of return and discount rates allow managers to increase reported pension expenses and, for discount rates, allow managers to increase reported pension liabilities. We find that prior to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, both rates are downward biased when firms freeze their plans, whereas after SOX the bias is lower. This finding is consistent with managers opportunistically biasing pension estimates to obtain labor concessions during periods of reduced regulatory scrutiny.     

“De‐risking” Corporate Pension Plans: Options for CFOs

Until the stock market bubble burst in 2000–2002, most CFOs viewed their defined benefit pension plans as profit centers and relatively risk‐free sources of income. Since neither pension assets nor liabilities were reported on corporate balance sheets, and expected returns on pension stocks could be substituted for actual returns when reporting net income, the risks associated with DB plans were masked by GAAP accounting and thus assumed to have no bearing on corporate capital structure. But when stock prices and corporate profits fell together, the risks associated with conventional stock‐heavy pension plans showed up first in reduced pension surpluses (or, in many cases, deficits) and then later in higher required cash contributions and lower reported earnings. As a consequence, today's investors (and rating agencies) are viewing pension and other legacy liabilities as corporate debt, and demands for transparency and increased funding have triggered accounting changes and proposed legislative reforms that will further unmask the economics. This article aims to provide both private‐sector and public‐sector CFOs with suggestions for reducing and controlling the cost of providing for the retirement of their employees. Profitable, tax‐paying companies with DB plans should consider (1) funding any unfunded liabilities (if necessary, by issuing debt) and (2) reducing pension equity and interest rate exposures by shifting some (if not all) pension assets into bonds and defeasing the pension liability (achieving a tax arbitrage in the process). And in cases where the expected costs of maintaining DB plans outweigh the benefits, companies should consider freezing or terminating their plans and switching to a defined contribution (DC) or some form of hybrid plan. The authors also propose similar changes for public pension plans, where underfunding and mismatch problems are greater, less transparent, and in some ways less tractable than those of corporate DB plans.     

Pension risk and corporate investment distortion

Failure to correct for pension risk leads to upward-biased discount rate estimates in firms with pension risk exposure. The result is a negative and economically significant relation between pension risk and corporate investment. The effect is confined to investment decisions that require discount rate estimates. Moreover, it is stronger if project value is more sensitive to such estimates. Because of this bias, firms miss valuable investment opportunities. The results survive robustness tests that address endogeneity concerns and alternative interpretations of the evidence. The general implication is that non-operating risks can distort, if ignored, corporate investment decisions.     

Smoothing Mechanisms in Defined Benefit Pension Accounting Standards: A Simulation Study*

The accounting for defined benefit (DB) pension plans is complex and varies significantly across jurisdictions despite recent international convergence efforts. Pension costs are significant, and many worry that unfavorable accounting treatment could lead companies to terminate DB plans, a result that would have important social implications. A key difference in accounting standards relates to whether and how the effects of fluctuations in market and demographic variables on reported pension cost are “smoothed". Critics argue that smoothing mechanisms lead to incomprehensible accounting information and induce managers to make dysfunctional decisions. Furthermore, the effectiveness of these mechanisms may vary. We use simulated data to test the volatility, representational faithfulness, and predictive ability of pension accounting numbers under Canadian, British, and international standards (IFRS). We find that smoothed pension expense is less volatile, more predictive of future expense, and more closely associated with contemporaneous funding than is “unsmoothed” pension expense. The corridor method and market‐related value approaches allowed under Canadian GAAP have virtually no smoothing effect incremental to the amortization of actuarial gains and losses. The pension accrual or deferred asset is highly correlated with the pension plan deficit/surplus. Our findings complement existing, primarily archival, pension accounting research and could provide guidance to standard‐setters.