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Abstract The objective was to investigate the factors related to the financial situation of sponsors that can be associated with the decision to allocate the assets of the defined benefit plans of Brazilian closed supplementary pension entities in the annual period from 2013 to 2019. Previous research has studied the sponsor's financial situation and the allocation of resources by segment type, but there is a gap in relation to portfolio composition in pension plans where there is no compulsory adherence to insurance. The relevance of this research lies in identifying the factors related to the sponsor's financial situation that may be associated with the resources allocation decision in order to understand what may jeopardize the future payment of benefits. This research contributes to the discussion on the relationship between the portfolio of pension plans and the financial situation of the sponsor; and, indirectly, to the debate on issues related to withdrawal of sponsorship, migration between defined benefit and defined contribution plans, and the acquisition of insurance to cover the payment of future benefits. A total of 134 benefit plans and their respective sponsors were analyzed over a seven-year period. Allocation was divided into decision categories according to portfolio composition, and the statistical technique of multinomial logistic regression was used to analyze the data. The results show that the level of funding, the degree of solvency, the size of the company and financial leverage, as well as factors such as past profitability, financial maturity and actuarial solvency, are aspects of the sponsor's financial situation that may influence the allocation decision and contribute to the advancement of research on the relationship between pension fund portfolio composition and the sponsor's financial situation. Resumo O objetivo foi investigar os fatores da situação financeira das patrocinadoras que podem ser associados à decisão na alocação dos ativos dos planos de benefício definido das entidades fechadas de previdência complementar brasileiras no período anual de 2013 a 2019. Pesquisas anteriores têm estudado a situação financeira da patrocinadora e a alocação de recursos por tipo de segmento, existindo lacuna em relação à composição do portfólio em planos previdenciários em que não há adesão obrigatória a um seguro. A relevância desta pesquisa está em identificar os fatores da situação financeira da patrocinadora que podem estar associados à decisão na alocação de recursos a fim de entender o que compromete o pagamento de benefícios no futuro. Esta pesquisa contribui com as discussões sobre a relação entre o portfólio dos planos previdenciários e a situação financeira da patrocinadora; e, de forma indireta, com o debate de temas ligados a retirada de patrocínio, migração entre planos da modalidade de benefício definido para contribuição definida e contratação de seguros para cobertura do pagamento de benefícios futuros. Foram analisados 134 planos de benefícios, e suas respectivas patrocinadoras, durante o período de sete anos. A alocação foi dividida em categorias de decisão de acordo com a composição das carteiras, e foi utilizada a técnica estatística de regressão logística multinomial para análise dos dados. Os resultados encontrados mostram que o nível de financiamento, o grau de solvência, o tamanho da empresa e a alavancagem financeira, além de fatores como rentabilidade passada, maturidade financeira e solvência atuarial, são aspectos sobre a situação financeira da patrocinadora que podem influenciar a decisão na alocação e contribuem com o avanço das pesquisas sobre a relação entre a composição do portfólio dos fundos de pensão e a situação financeira da patrocinadora.

The focus of this article is to quantitatively evaluate and compare three of the most popular defined benefit plan types based on various variable assumptions. The decision of when to retire and take a pension, or being given the option to change plans, often happens only once. This makes the evaluation and comparison critical. This paper provides a numerical analysis with a broad perspective so that employees with varying career situations and retirement plans can better evaluate their financial standing. Data sources include standard economic assumptions used in valuing pension plans, as well as a survey of employer sponsored pension plans. Recent pension plans provide more flexibility by paying out pensions as a single lump sum, however, these plans generally provide lower benefits.

This article examines the capital structure implications of defined benefit corporate pension plans. The magnitude of the liabilities arising from these pension plans is substantial. We show that leverage ratios for firms with pension plans are about 35% higher when pension assets and liabilities are incorporated into the capital structure. We estimate that the tax shields from pension contributions are about a third of those from interest payments. Pension contributions have a modest effect in lowering firms' marginal corporate tax rates. Once pensions are considered, firms are less conservative in their choice of leverage than has been previously thought. We show that firms incorporate the magnitude of their pension assets and liabilities into their capital structure decisions.

Nearly all state and local pension defined benefit pensions plans compute the present value of their future liabilities using the expected return on the assets held in the pension trust. This practice contrasts sharply with finance theory, which is unambiguous that the appropriate discount rate is one that reflects the riskiness of the liabilities, not the assets. This paper notes that the strong constitutional and other legal benefit protections make many defined benefit pension obligations virtually risk free. Were governments to discount liabilities in this way, it would reveal that state and local pensions are more underfunded than is generally reported.

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.

Public sector employees receive large fractions of their lifetime income in the form of deferred compensation. The introduction of the opportunity provided to Illinois public school employees to purchase additional pension benefits allows me to estimate employees' willingness-to-pay for benefits relative to the cost of providing them. The results show employees are willing to pay 20 cents on average for a dollar increase in the present value of expected retirement benefits. The findings suggest substantial inefficiency in compensation and cast doubt on the ability of deferred compensation schemes to attract employees.

This paper investigates a dynamic liability-driven investment policy for defined-benefit (DB) plans by incorporating the loss aversion of a sponsor, who is assumed to be more sensitive to underfunding than overfunding. Through the lens of prospect theory, we first set up a loss-aversion utility function for a sponsor whose utility depends on the funding ratio in each period, obtained from stochastic processes of pension assets and liabilities. We then construct a multi-horizon dynamic control optimization problem to find the optimal investment strategy that maximizes the expected utility of the plan sponsor. A genetic algorithm is employed to provide a numerical solution for our nonlinear dynamic optimization problem. Our results suggest that the overall paths of the optimal equity allocation decline as the age of a plan participant reaches retirement. We also find that the equity portion of the portfolio increases when a sponsor is less loss-averse or the contribution rate is lower.

This paper provides the first empirical assessment of the impact of life expectancy assumptions on the liabilities of private U.S. defined benefit (DB) pension plans. Using detailed actuarial and financial information provided by the U.S. Department of Labor, we construct a longevity variable for each pension plan and then measure the impact of varying life expectancy assumptions across plans and over time on pension plan liabilities. The results indicate that each additional year of life expectancy increases pension liabilities by about 3 to 4 percent. This effect is not only statistically highly significant but also economically: each year of additional life expectancy would increase private U.S. DB pension plan liabilities by as much as 84 billion.

We investigate whether multiemployer defined-benefit pension plan (MEPP) underfunding is priced by shareholders and creditors. Prior to the FASB's new MEPP standard (effective December 2011), when the disclosures on such plans were sparse, we find evidence (some evidence) that our estimate of a firm's share of MEPP underfunding is credit (value) relevant. We also find some evidence that a proxy for the funded status of a firm's MEPPs is incrementally value relevant over and above the firm's cash contributions, but no evidence that it is credit relevant. Furthermore, an estimate of MEPP underfunding that incorporates the additional disclosures required under the new MEPP standard is value and credit relevant, both individually and incrementally, over and above our old estimate. Overall, our findings suggest that shareholders and creditors view MEPP underfunding as a debt-like obligation and that the additional MEPP disclosures under the new standard are useful to market participants.