The Many Challenges of Pension Accounting

Accounting for defined benefit pension plans has long been a major issue in accounting. Standard‐setters are grappling with revisions to pension accounting standards, and much change has already occurred in the United Kingdom. This paper identifies and discusses most of the major issues that standard‐setters must confront in developing new approaches to financial reporting for pensions. Key issues concern how to report the impact of changes in assumptions, how to recognize pension costs on the balance sheet and income statement, and how to reconcile the differences between accountants' and actuaries' approaches to pensions. Current standards assume that accounting estimates are independent of actuarial assumptions, and yet require a direct comparison of the accounting liability with the pension plan assets, when in fact they are incompatible measures based on differing assumptions and differing methodologies. As well, accounting has been complicit in managers' wishes to hide the volatility inherent in a pension plan investment strategy that focuses on higher‐risk equities to fund estimated monetary liabilities that have been discounted at low‐risk interest rates. Drawing on studies and research done largely in Europe, this paper attempts to consolidate some of the current thinking on the topic and to propose some preferred approaches to dealing with the problems of pension accounting.     

The Employer's Role in Reforming the U.S. Health Care System

In 2005 large U.S. employers spent an average of almost $7,400 per head on health care benefits, a 73% increase in the last five years. If the current trend continues, American companies may find it difficult to compete in a global marketplace where international competitors provide labor with heath care at a fraction of U.S. costs. This article argues that effective reform of the U.S. health care system will require major efforts from all major “stakeholders,” starting with the federal government and state and local governments and including insurance companies and the “consumers” of health care services. By far the important role, however, is reserved for private‐sector employers, which have been the incubator for recent innovations in American health care and are in the best position to coordinate and drive health care reform. But incremental steps in cost‐sharing, small‐scale pilot projects of consumer‐based designs, and employee awareness campaigns will not be enough. Employers need to take radical steps to break through the inertia that has built up among all stakeholders over the past 50 years. Chief among the author's proposals for employers are the following:

• ? In choosing a health care plan for employees, use value‐based purchasing criteria that consider more than just the price and access to services.
• ? Help consumers by demanding information from providers and insurers about the cost and efficacy of health care services, and of alternative treatments, before the choices are made.
• ? Encourage “consumerism” by setting up benefit plans that have a Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRA) or a Health Savings Account (HSA) component.

As the author states in closing, “Let these reforms begin with employers as the organizing force to drive needed change across the system. That may very well be the only way to save our employment‐based model.”     

Guaranteeing Defined Contribution Pensions: The Option to Buy Back a Defined Benefit Promise

After a long commitment to defined benefit (DB) pension plans for U.S. public sector employees, many state legislatures have introduced defined contribution (DC) plans for their public employees. In this process, investment risk that was previously borne by state DB plans has now devolved to employees covered by the new DC plans. In light of this trend, some states have introduced a guarantee mechanism to help protect DC plan participants. One such guarantee takes the form of an option permitting DC plan participants to buy back their DB benefit for a price. This article develops a theoretical framework to analyze the option design and illustrate how employee characteristics influence the option's cost. We illustrate the potential impact of a buy‐back option in a pension reform enacted recently by the State of Florida for its public employees. If employees were to exercise the buy‐back option optimally, the market value of this option could represent up to 100 percent of the DC contributions over their work life.     

Limiting the ACA's Threats to Small Group Health Insurance Markets

We identify three threats to small group health insurance markets that may result from the 2014 implementation of certain provisions in the Affordable Care Act (ACA). First, small employers with predominantly low‐income employees may tend to opt out of small group markets because their employees will be better off with subsidized individual coverage. Second, small employers with employees of heterogeneous income levels will have strong incentives to offer coverage that is either “unaffordable” or fails to provide “minimum value” in order to preserve the availability of government subsidies for their low‐income employees. Finally, small employers that continue to offer group plans will face increased incentives to self‐insure those plans, further contracting small group markets and subjecting them to adverse selection. Collectively, these forces may destabilize small group markets and increase the ACA's fiscal cost. We therefore conclude by offering various reforms aimed at offsetting these risks and preserving the viability of small group markets.     

Supplementary Pension Coverage in Britain

The 1986 Social Security Act introduced far-reaching changes to the supplementary pension environment in Britain, encouraging the growth of defined contribution pension plans and especially personal pensions. This paper examines the pattern of supplementary pension coverage of employees in Britain five years after the implementation of the Act, using cross-sectional data from the Family Resources Survey 1993–94. Two-thirds of employees in Britain are covered by private contracted-out pension scheme. Employer-provided defined benefit pension schemes remain the dominant type of supplementary pension scheme. The growth of personal pension plans is more marked among manual, less-skilled, workers in smaller establishments. The paper concludes that, in the absence of further pension reform, adverse labour market conditions will exert downward pressure on private pension coverage. JEL classification:I38, J32, J38.     

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.     

Survey of cash balance conversions

By examining data on actual conversions to cash balance pension plans, the author challenges the validity of major criticisms faced by employers sponsoring cash balance plans and their advisors. The data admonish against using broad generalizations to assess the total impact on employers and employees of a conversion to a cash balance plan.     

Wages,productivity, and retirement

Pensions, both state provided and privately provided, affect incentives to retire. But private pensions are part of the long term compensation package, and altering pensions not only affects retirement incentives, but also wages. A key factor in determining whether retirement occurs at the appropriate age is the relation of productivity to alternatives. When wages, coupled with public and private pension accrual, deviate from worker productivity, private retirement incentives are distorted. Sometimes this results in too much early retirement, creating fiscal difficulties. Sometimes, it results in a desire for delayed retirement, which argues for mandatory retirement rules. Pay compression, where wages do not vary across individuals as much as productivity, exacerbate distortions. Defined benefit pension plans tend to create incentives to retire after a certain number of years of work. Defined contribution plans do not have this feature. Public plans should be designed noting their interaction with incentives that are already inherent in the private wage and pension schemes.     

美国现金余额计划及其对我国的启示

混合型养老金计划是国际养老金计划发展的重要趋势,现金余额计划是美国养老金混合计划中发展较好、规模较大的一种私人养老金计划。该计划具有较低的养老金计划成本、资金筹措较具弹性、养老金给付享受政府担保、较好的激励机制、较强的透明度和携带性、为雇主和关键员工提供更高的福利保障、与其他计划搭配的计划组合效应等特定优势。美国2006年养老金保护法颁布实施后,该计划的年龄歧视、转换期的养老金蚀损、给付贴现则所导致的制度法律风险得以消除,使该计划具有较好的发展前景。美国现金余额计划对中国企业年金发展具有重要借鉴意义。     

An examination of the perceptions of auditors and chief financial officers regarding principles versus rules based accounting standards

The debate over the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) by United States issuers, or its convergence with U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (U.S. GAAP) has been going on for several years now. However, as of this writing, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has still not taken a definitive position on the issue. This is in part due to issues involving the cost of adoption, independence concerns relating to the IFRS promulgation body, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), and the debate over which type of accounting standards is superior for financial reporting: IFRS, which are said to be “principles-based,” or U.S. GAAP, which are said to be “rules-based.” In this paper we examined the views of two stakeholders in the U.S. financial reporting system, auditors in large public accounting firms and Chief Financial Officers in the Fortune 1000. We elicited their perceptions involving ten situations where specific rules are incorporated in U.S. GAAP. We asked if the elimination of the specific rule would be likely to better achieve the “qualitative characteristics of useful financial information” as defined by the Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting adopted by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in 2010 (FASB 2010) and the similar document adopted by the IASB at the same time (IASB 2010). We found that in eight of the ten situations both groups preferred the rules-based accounting regime (the current U.S. GAAP rules) over a principles-based approach.     

Design of employee pension benefits model and China's pension gender gap

The pension gender gap is a universal concern, and policymakers worldwide strive to address the factors leading to gender inequality. This study examines the pension gender gap problem and its causes and effects in China, conducting micro-empirical simulations on China's employee pension benefits model. We propose solutions to this gender inequality and suggest an intra-family pension benefits transfer for women in a family framework. For family units headed by a single woman, we recommend enhanced tax-deductible contributions by prior employers to strengthen the equality of pensions between genders throughout retirement. This additional support and enhancement of female pensions can effectively narrow the pension gap between male and female beneficiaries while maintaining the system's long-term sustainability. More importantly, these proposed enhancements minimize acute poverty while improving the living standards of female pensioners.     

Cash-Balance Plan Conversions: Evidence on Excise Taxes and Implicit Contracts

Firms that wish to switch from a traditional defined‐benefit pension plan to a defined‐contribution‐type plan have a choice between converting to a cash‐balance plan or replacing the defined‐benefit plan with a full‐fledged defined‐contribution plan. According to Ippolito and Thompson's (1999; Industrial Relations, 39: 228‐245) excise tax avoidance hypothesis, a number of firms have switched to cash‐balance plans because conversion allows the firm to avoid excise taxes on its excess pension assets. In contrast to existing studies, our evidence supports the excise tax avoidance hypothesis. Cash‐balance plan conversions also have been criticized for imposing pension losses on older employees. The implicit contract theory of pensions predicts that poorly performing firms would be the ones that would impose losses on employees. However, our evidence indicates that firms converting to cash‐balance plans typically are not poor performers.     

Credible Pensions*

One of the main problems in pension policy is to develop an institutional framework that guarantees that public and private pensions promises are kept. This paper discusses how the governance of public and private pensions is key to making such promises credible. It argues that credibility concerns undermine the case for earnings‐related pensions run by the state and private defined benefit plans.     

On the value relevance of SFAS No. 158

After considerable discussion and some controversy, Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 158 entitled, “Employers’ Accounting for Defined Benefit Pension and Other Postretirement Plans” was implemented in 2006. An important goal of these standards was to enhance financial reporting transparency for defined benefit pension plans (FASB, 2006). This study evaluates how well SFAS No. 158 achieved its objective. In particular, we compare the respective pre and post-SFAS 158 incremental value relevance of the balance sheet and income statement for firms with defined benefit pension plans (DBPP). Results suggest that the value relevance of book value (net income) increased (decreased) for DBPP firms after the implementation of SFAS No. 158.     

英国职业养老金发展动态及启示

本文介绍了英国职业养老金的基本情况。在老龄化等影响下,英国公共部门和私有部门职业养老金分别出现了严重危机。近年英国政府全面加强了职业养老金改革,包括实施养老金个人账户制,调整公共部门养老金政策,提出加强工作养老金的设想等。这些政策的核心是如何设计一种更有效率,但同时保障了人们养老需求的市场化私有养老金模式。英国职业养老金的发展的经验教训,对我国完善养老金制度有积极启示意义。     

SIX CHALLENGES IN DESIGNING EQUITY-BASED PAY

The past two decades have seen a dramatic increase in the equitybased pay of U.S. corporate executives, an increase that has been driven almost entirely by the explosion of stock option grants. When properly designed, equity‐based pay can raise corporate productivity and shareholder value by helping companies attract, motivate, and retain talented managers. But there are good reasons to question whether the current forms of U.S. equity pay are optimal. In many cases, substantial stock and option payoffs to top executives–particularly those who cashed out much of their holdings near the top of the market–appear to have come at the expense of their shareholders, generating considerable skepticism about not just executive pay practices, but the overall quality of U.S. corporate governance. At the same time, many companies that have experienced sharp stock price declines are now struggling with the problem of retaining employees holding lots of deep‐underwater options. This article discusses the design of equity‐based pay plans that aim to motivate sustainable, or long‐run, value creation. As a first step, the author recommends the use of longer vesting periods and other requirements on executive stock and option holdings, both to limit managers' ability to “time” the market and to reduce their incentives to take shortsighted actions that increase near‐term earnings at the expense of longer‐term cash flow. Besides requiring “more permanent” holdings, the author also proposes a change in how stock options are issued. In place of popular “fixed value” plans that adjust the number of options awarded each year to reflect changes in the share price (and that effectively reward management for poor performance by granting more options when the price falls, and fewer when it rises), the author recommends the use of “fixed number” plans that avoid this unintended distortion of incentives. As the author also notes, there is considerable confusion about the real economic cost of options relative to stock. Part of the confusion stems, of course, from current GAAP accounting, which allows companies to report the issuance of at‐the‐money options as costless and so creates a bias against stock and other forms of compensation. But, coming on top of the “opportunity cost” of executive stock options to the company's shareholders, there is another, potentially significant cost of options (and, to a lesser extent, stock) that arises from the propensity of executives and employees to place a lower value on company stock and options than well‐diversified outside investors. The author's conclusion is that grants of (slow‐vesting) stock are likely to have at least three significant advantages over employee stock options:

• ? they are more highly valued by executives and employees (per dollar of cost to shareholders);
• ? they continue to provide reasonably strong ownership incentives and retention power, regardless of whether the stock price rises or falls, because they don't go underwater; and
• ? the value of such grants is much more transparent to stockholders, employees, and the press.

     

Allocating Shareholder Capital to Pension Plans

This article discusses the corporate challenge of providing retirement income to employees while limiting the costs and risks of pension plans to the companies themselves by addressing five main questions:

• ? What are the major issues and challenges surrounding pensions? Although the pension shortfalls have been the focus of attention, the author argues that the more serious concern is the risk stemming from the mismatch between pension assets and pension liabilities— that is, the funding of debt‐like liabilities with equity‐heavy asset portfolios.
• ? To what extent do the equity market and equity prices reflect the shortfall in value and the mismatch in risk? While the author describes some evidence of the market's ability to capture pension risk, analysts' P/E multiples and management's assessments of cost of capital may still be distorted by failure to take full account of the risks associated with pension assets.
• ? How should management analyze and formulate strategic solutions? Without offering specific solutions, the author presents a framework for analyzing the problem from a strategic perspective that can be used in formulating a company's pension policy. In particular, the article recommends that companies take an integrated perspective that views pension assets and liabilities as parts of the corporate balance sheet, and the pension asset allocation decision as a critical aspect of a corporate‐wide enterprise risk management program.
• ? If a company chooses to make a major change in its pension policy, such as a partial or complete immunization accomplished by substituting bonds for stocks, how would you communicate the new policy to the rating agencies and investors?
• ? What are the major issues to be thinking about when contemplating a change from a DB plan to a defined contribution, or DC, plan? The author argues that DC plans without some corporate oversight or responsibility for results are not a long‐term solution.

     

Corporate reporting implication in migrating from defined benefit to defined contribution pension schemes: A focus on the UK

Pensions are intricately linked to employees’ well-being in the latter part of their life and during their working life in that they provide a sense of financial security in retirement. Since the 1980s, pension schemes have changed both in concept and detail with significant consequences for beneficiaries. This paper explores one of the major changes: the migration from defined benefit (DB) to defined contribution (DC) pension schemes focusing on this change's interface with accounting. In exploring this shift from DB to DC schemes, the paper uses a critical perspective to reflect on this interface including how the change is accounted for in corporate reporting narrative. The key focus is on issues of political economy: it is found in this respect that while wealth is effectively distributed from pension holders efforts are made to legitimise or displace attention from pension changes. An analysis of narratives of corporate annual reports is undertaken to critically explore corporate communication to stakeholders vis-à-vis pension scheme changes. Findings suggest limited and problematic engagement with employees as per the corporate annual report narrative. We also point to a lack of appetite on the part of existing employees to engage employers on these changes. The change is framed to give workers an impression that they are taking responsibility for their future whilst an alternative view is that in actuality the organisation is decoupling from pension responsibility and devolving associated risks to employees for greater profitability. Counter accounting may be a way forward.     

The Public Responsibility of Actuaries in American Pensions

Abstract

This article traces the history of the public responsibility of actuaries concerning American pension plans. It includes both defined-benefit and defined-contribution plans for employees of both private and public employers. It does not include Social Security. Actuaries have provided innovative approaches to plan design, funding, funding instruments, accounting, and legal and regulatory requirements. Actuaries have made substantial contributions that have enabled pension plans, together with Social Security, to provide economic security for millions of workers and their dependents when employment ends. However, many Americans still lack assurance of a retirement income that is initially adequate, continues for life, and keeps pace with inflation. Thus, challenges will continue to face pension actuaries in the years ahead.     

Cash balance plans: helping employers meet today's staffing needs

The author examines how cash balance plans better meet employers' staffing needs than traditional pension plans. He asserts that out-of-date pension laws, rather than employers, are responsible for creating the very "abuses" that so many are complaining about with regard to cash balance plan conversions.