Horizon Actuarial Services, LLC has partnered with the International Foundation of Employee Benefits Plans to conduct a study of U.S. multiemployer defined benefit pension plans.  The study covers multiemployer plans in all industries, building upon the similar study of construction industry plans that Horizon Actuarial originally conducted with the Mechanical Contractors Association of America (MCAA) in 2012.
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The report – The Multiemployer Retirement Plan Landscape: A Ten-Year Look (2004-2013) – is available at the International Foundation’s website at www.ifebp.org/multiemployerretirement. The report provides a look at historical trends for U.S. multiemployer retirement plans for the ten-year period from 2004 to 2013.  It will help plan trustees, professional service providers, and policymakers gain a better understanding of these plans and their environment. The report may also serve as a useful comparison tool, enabling trustees and advisors to understand how their plans compare with others with respect to demographics, cash flows, investments, and funding.

This is the second edition of the report to include information on multiemployer defined contribution (DC) retirement plans, as well as multiemployer defined benefit (DB) pension plans.
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Please contact your Horizon Actuarial consultant if you have any questions.

At Horizon Actuarial Services, LLC, we are actuaries, not investment professionals.  Therefore, when developing assumptions as to what returns a pension plan’s assets might be expected to earn in the future, we look to our colleagues in the investment advisory community.  Each year, we survey different investment advisors and ask them to provide their “capital market assumptions” – their expectations for future risk and returns for different asset classes in which pension funds commonly invest.

The information gathered from this survey can help answer the commonly-asked question: “Is my plan’s investment return assumption still reasonable?”  Of course, there are many factors to consider when evaluating a plan’s investment return assumption, such as its asset allocation and the maturity of its participant population.  Any of these factors can make the expected return for one plan very different from others.  Therefore, this report does not opine on the reasonableness of any one plan’s investment return assumption.  Nevertheless, we hope this report will be a useful resource for trustees, actuaries, and investment professionals alike.

Horizon Actuarial sincerely thanks the 29 investment advisors who participated in the 2015 edition of this survey.

The report on the results of the 2015 survey can be viewed below.

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         2015 Survey of Capital Market Assumptions

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This is the fourth edition of the survey for which we have published a report. Prior editions can be found below:

          | 2012 Survey | 2013 Survey | 2014 Survey | 

On June 17, 2015, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) issued guidance on the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014 (MPRA), which was signed into law last December.

The IRS’s guidance comes in the form of a revenue procedure regarding the application and approval process for benefit suspensions under MPRA.  The IRS has posted the revenue procedure on its website.  The revenue procedure was issued in conjunction with temporary and proposed regulations providing guidance on benefit suspensions.

The PBGC’s guidance comes in the form of an interim final regulation on the partition rules under MPRA.  The PBGC has posted a press release regarding the regulation on its website, which includes a link to the regulation itself.  The regulation provides guidance on the process of applying for a partition, including information required from the plan sponsor as part of the application.

Horizon Actuarial Services, LLC has partnered with the International Foundation of Employee Benefits Plans to conduct a study of U.S. multiemployer defined benefit pension plans.  The study covers multiemployer plans in all industries, building upon the similar study of construction industry plans that Horizon Actuarial originally conducted with the Mechanical Contractors Association of America (MCAA) in 2012.

The report – The Multiemployer Retirement Plan Landscape: A Ten-Year Look (2003-2012) – is available at the International Foundation’s website at www.ifebp.org/multiemployerretirement. The report provides a look at historical trends for U.S. multiemployer retirement plans for the ten-year period from 2003 to 2012.  It will help plan trustees, professional service providers, and policymakers gain a better understanding of these plans and their environment. The report may also serve as a useful comparison tool, enabling trustees and advisors to understand how their plans compare with others with respect to demographics, cash flows, investments, and funding.

While the first edition of the report (covering the ten-year period from 2002 through 2011) focused only on multiemployer defined benefit (DB) pension plans, this second edition of the report also includes information on multiemployer defined contribution (DC) retirement plans.
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Please contact your Horizon Actuarial consultant if you have any questions.

At Horizon Actuarial Services, LLC, we are actuaries, not investment professionals.  Therefore, when developing assumptions as to what returns a pension plan’s assets might be expected to earn in the future, we look to our colleagues in the investment advisory community.  Each year, we survey different independent investment advisors and ask them to provide their “capital market assumptions” – their expectations for future risk and returns for different asset classes in which pension funds commonly invest.

The information gathered from this survey can help answer the commonly-asked question: “Is my plan’s investment return assumption still reasonable?”  Of course, there are many factors to consider when evaluating a plan’s investment return assumption, such as its asset allocation and the maturity of its participant population.  Any of these factors can make the expected return for one plan very different from others.  Therefore, this report does not opine on the reasonableness of any one plan’s investment return assumption.  Nevertheless, we hope this report will be a useful resource for trustees, actuaries, and investment professionals alike.

Horizon Actuarial sincerely thanks the 23 investment advisors who participated in the 2014 edition of this survey.

The report on the results of the 2014 survey can be viewed below.

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                                    2014 Survey of Capital Market Assumptions
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This is the third edition of the survey for which we have published a report.  The 2013 edition of our survey can be found here, and the 2012 edition can be found here.

Horizon Actuarial Services, LLC has partnered with the International Foundation of Employee Benefits Plans to conduct a study of U.S. multiemployer defined benefit pension plans.  The study covers multiemployer plans in all industries, building upon the similar study of construction industry plans that Horizon Actuarial conducted with the Mechanical Contractors Association of America (MCAA) in 2012 and again in 2013.

The inaugural version of the report – The Multiemployer Defined Benefit Pension Plan Landscape: A Ten-Year Look (2002-2011) – is available at the International Foundation’s website at www.ifebp.org.

The report provides a look at historical trends for all U.S. multiemployer defined benefit plans for the ten-year period from 2002 to 2011.  It will help plan trustees, professional service providers, and policymakers gain a better understanding of these plans and their environment.

The report may also serve as a useful comparison tool, enabling trustees and advisors to understand how their plans compare with others with respect to demographics, cash flows, investments, and funding.

Horizon Actuarial and the International Foundation are working on a companion report focusing on multiemployer defined contribution pension plans; that report is scheduled to be released later in 2014.​

Please contact your Horizon Actuarial consultant if you have any questions.

The December, 2013 edition of the Benefits Magazine published by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans includes two articles on liability-driven investing.  One article was written by Gordon Latter of Ryan Labs, and the other was written by Stan Goldfarb of Horizon Actuarial Services, LLC.

A copy of the Stan’s article can be downloaded via the link below.

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    Liability-Driven Investments – A Multiemployer Perspective

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The article was reproduced with permission from the International Foundation.  For the full December, 2013 edition of the Benefits Magazine, visit www.ifebp.org.​

Recent events — such as the bankruptcy of the city of Detroit — have increased discussion on how pension obligations are measured.  While most of the conversation has focused on public sector plans, many of the same pension funding concepts also apply to multiemployer plans.

The November, 2013 edition of the Benefits Magazine published by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans includes an article that discusses two different approaches for measuring multiemployer pension obligations.  This article, “Setting the Pension Funding Target: Why Expected Return Matters,” was co-authored by Josh Shapiro of the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans (NCCMP) and Cary Franklin of Horizon Actuarial Services, LLC.

A copy of the article can be downloaded via the link below.

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      Setting the Pension Funding Target: Why Expected Return Matters

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The article was reproduced with permission from the International Foundation.  For the full November, 2013 edition of the Benefits Magazine, visit www.ifebp.org.

At Horizon Actuarial Services, LLC, we are actuaries, not investment professionals.  Therefore, when developing assumptions as to what returns a pension plan’s assets might be expected to earn in the future, we look to our colleagues in the investment advisory community.  For each of the past four years, we have surveyed different independent investment advisors and asked them to provide their “capital market assumptions” – their expectations for future risk and returns for different asset classes in which pension funds commonly invest.

The information gathered from this survey can help answer the commonly-asked question: “Is my plan’s investment return assumption still reasonable?”  Of course, there are many factors to consider when evaluating a plan’s investment return assumption, such as its asset allocation and the maturity of its participant population.  Any of these factors can make the expected return for one plan very different from others.  Therefore, this report does not opine on the reasonableness of any one plan’s investment return assumption. Nevertheless, we hope this report will be a useful resource for trustees, actuaries, and investment professionals alike.

Horizon Actuarial sincerely thanks the 19 investment advisors who participated in the 2013 edition of this survey.

The report on the results of the 2013 survey can be viewed below.

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      2013 Survey of Capital Market Assumptions

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This is the second edition of the survey for which we have published a report.  The 2012 edition of our survey can be found here.

The Mechanical Contractors Association of America, Inc. (MCAA) and Horizon Actuarial Services, LLC (Horizon) have partnered to build an inventory of historical data for multiemployer pension plans in the construction industry. This inventory was built during the first half of 2012 using publicly available information from Form 5500 filings.

The purpose of this report is to summarize and analyze key trends in plan demographics, cash flows, investments, funding, and costs over the period from 2001 through 2010. By analyzing these trends, we can better understand how these construction industry plans have evolved over the past decade and where they may be headed in the future.

This report also examines plan investment fees and operating expenses for construction industry plans. If you are a plan trustee, you may find this section of the report useful as a comparison tool.

Finally, as an appendix, this report provides a listing of all of the construction industry plans included in the inventory. If you are an employer participating in one or more of these plans, the information in this listing will help you comply with the new multiemployer plan disclosures required by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB).

The report can be viewed below.

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    Inventory of Construction Industry Pension Plans – 2012 Edition

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The report can also be viewed at the MCAA’s website.  This version includes an opening statement from the MCAA’s president.