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Retirement 20/20 Initiative

A Call for Papers is being issued as part of the Society of Actuaries Pension Section Council's Retirement 20/20 project. Potential submitters are encouraged to review the report from the 2006 conference, "Building the Foundations for New Retirement Systems," which can be found at www.retirement2020.soa.org/.

This Call for Papers is focused on developing ideas in the following areas:

• In what ways do currently sent signals inhibit the development of new retirement plan designs, new workforce arrangements and other modifications to our employment and retirement system?
• Are the current signals appropriate? Should some signals be eliminated? If signals aren't appropriate, how do we redesign retirement plans, social insurance and other components of the retirement system to minimize inappropriate signals?
• What happens if we abolish certain signals? Are workers able to navigate retirement without signals?
• Should signals be uniform across society, or is it permissible to send different signals to different classes of workers (e.g., those with jobs with a physical labor component)?
• Is it appropriate for some stakeholders to send signals but not for others? Can society send signals but not employers or vice versa?
• In what ways could stakeholders modify pension policy and program design today to change the signals being sent? What small changes could be implemented today to begin to address the issues, goals and directions framed in the 2006 report mentioned above? What more substantive initiatives might be effective in beginning to change the signals?

The two calls for papers that have been issued are:

• “Changing Retirement Signals,” which stems from discussion at the 2006 Retirement 20/20 conference in which certain signals were identified as an important means of impacting future retirement behavior. In discussions at the 2007 conference, it was further debated as to whether the preferred approach should be to develop new signals to impact behavior or to adjust existing ones.
• “Incorporating Self-Adjusting Mechanisms into Retirement Systems,” also stemming from discussions at the 2006 Retirement 20/20 conference. Self-adjusting mechanisms were recommended as a useful component for successful future retirement systems.