Plan Termination:
Whether, When, and How?
Panel: Don Segal, Harold Ashner, TBA
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Wednesday, October 29 2:00 – 6:00 PM
Thursday, October 30 8:00 AM – Noon
Credits: EA Noncore TBD

It’s a new and challenging world for DB plan sponsors. More and more, your DB clients are asking you about an “exit strategy.” Can you help them determine and achieve their goals?

• Standard Terminations: What goes into a truly useful standard termination study? When should the termination occur—ASAP, or years from now when the PPA lump sum changes are fully phased in? Should the plan be frozen if it hasn’t already been? Should termination lump sums be made available for some or all participants, or should the closeout instead be based entirely on annuity pricing? How about the plan’s investment mix in the interim? Are any assumption changes warranted? When and how would the plan be made sufficient? Do you know how to navigate through the minefield of PBGC and IRS rules to complete the standard termination process successfully? What are the most common distribution mistakes? What does it take to survive a PBGC standard termination audit?

• Distress and Involuntary Terminations: For your financially strapped clients with underfunded plans, what’s required for a distress or involuntary termination? What do you need to know about PBGC calculations, whether of underfunding or of missed contribution totals? How can your clients deal effectively with the liabilities PBGC pursues, including its stepped-up enforcement of “downsizing liability” in anticipation of a future termination? What about PBGC reporting requirements, PBGC monitoring, and PBGC’s role in corporate transactions and bankruptcies?

In short, whatever kind of termination your client may be contemplating, what are the “traps for the unwary” that may be awaiting your client—and you?

Get answers from the experts on a broad range of plan termination issues at this timely and highly informative seminar. Speakers include actuaries with significant experience in dealing with plan terminations, legal experts, insurance industry experts, and PBGC representatives.

Real World ERM Applications
Panel: TBA
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Wednesday, October 29 2:00 – 6:00 PM
Thursday, October 30 8:00 AM – Noon
Credits: EA Noncore TBD

Enterprise risk management has become a hot topic and term in the actuarial community. The future for employee benefits actuaries is changing more rapidly than any other discipline. While casualty and insurance actuaries seem to be staking out their practice within the ERM arena, the employee benefits actuaries have been slow to get a grasp on incorporating ERM into their discipline. Good business leaders have an intuitive understanding of risk and opportunity and many actuaries haven’t typically defined risk beyond traditional insurable risks. As actuaries begin thinking more like business leaders many more applications of actuarial skill sets in analyzing risk will become apparent. This seminar is an open forum to discuss ERM and begin to share and provide possible alternative directions for actuaries.