Milliman released its monthly Milliman 100 Pension Funding Index (PFI), which analyzes the 100 largest U.S. corporate pension plans, and they are reporting that the collective funded ratio has risen to 105.1% as of June 30th from 104.9% at the end of May. The driving force behind the improved funding was the powerful 2.6% asset return for the index’s members, which more than offset the growth in pension liabilities as the discount rate fell by 19 bps.
As a result of the significant appreciation during the month, the Milliman PFI plan assets rose by $27 billion to $1.281 trillion during the month from $1.254 trillion at the end of May. The discount rate fell to 5.52% in June, from 5.71% in May and it is now down slights from 5.59% at the beginning of the year.
“The second quarter of 2025 was a win-win for pensions from both sides of the balance sheet, as market gains of 3.42% drove up plan assets while modest discount rate increases of 2 basis points reduced plan liabilities and resulted in the highest funded ratio since October 2022,” said Zorast Wadia, author of the PFI.
Zorast further stated that “if discount rates decline in the second half of the year, plan sponsors will need to be ever more focused on preserving funded status gains and employing prudent asset-liability management.” We couldn’t agree more. We, at Ryan ALM, believe that the primary goal in managing a DB pension plan is to secure the promised benefits at a reasonable cost and with prudent risk. It is NOT a return objective. Having achieved this level of funding allows plan sponsors and their advisors to significantly de-risk their plans through Cash Flow Matching (CFM), which is a superior duration strategy, as each month of the assignment is duration matched.
We’ve already shared with you the importance of dividends to the long-term return of the S&P 500 by referencing studies conducted by Guinness Global Investors.
According to the Guinness study, which was last updated as of April 2020, the contribution to return of the S&P 500 from dividends and dividends reinvested for 10-year periods since 1940 was a robust 47% down insignificantly from 48% a decade ago. Extending the measurement period to 20 years from 1940 forward highlights an incredible 57% contribution to the total return of the S&P 500 from dividends. Importantly, this study is on the entirety of the S&P 500, not just those companies that pay dividends. If the universe only included dividend payers, this analysis would reveal strikingly greater contributions since roughly 100 S&P 500 companies are not currently paying a dividend.
As if this study isn’t enough to convince you of the importance of dividends to the long-term return of stocks, Glen Eagle Trading put out an email today that referenced a recent Wall Street Journal article, titled “Why Investors Are Right to Love Dividends”. The article highlighted the fact that recent studies show S&P 500 dividend-paying stocks returned 9.2% annually over the past 50 years, which is more than double the 4.3% return of non-dividend payers, with lower volatility. Then there is this study by Ned Davis which broke down the contribution of dividends for the 47-years ending December 21, 2019.
Once again, it becomes abundantly clear why investing in companies paying dividends is a terrific long-term strategy. It also begs the question, why do many plan sponsors and their advisors regularly “sweep” income from their equity managers to meet ongoing benefits and expenses? In doing so, instead of structuring the pension plan to have a liquidity bucket to meet those obligations, this activity diminishes the potential long-term contribution to equities from dividends. As longer-term returns are reduced, greater contributions are needed to make up the shortfall compounding the problem.
Please don’t sweep interest and dividend income or capital distributions for that matter, establish an asset allocation that has a dedicated liquidity bucket that uses cash flow matching to secure and fund ongoing benefits and expenses. The remainder of the assets not deployed in the liquidity bucket go into a growth bucket that benefits from the passage of time.
Jason Russell and Seth Almaliah, Segal, have co-authored an article titled, “Benefits of Pension De-Risking and Why Now is the Right Time”. Yes! We, at Ryan ALM, agree that there are significant benefits to de-risking a pension plan and we absolutely agree that NOW is the right time to engage in that activity.
In their article they mention that the current interest rate environment is providing opportunities to de-risk that plan sponsors haven’t seen in more than two decades. In addition to the current rate environment, they reflect on the fact that many pension plans are now “mature” defining that stage as a point where the number of retired lives and terminated vested participants is greater than the active population. They also equate mature plans to one’s that have negative cash flow, where benefits and expenses eclipse contributions. In a negative cash flow environment, market corrections can be more painful as assets must be sold to meet ongoing payments locking in losses, as a result.
They continue by referencing four “risk reducing” strategies, including: 1) reducing Investment Volatility, 2) liability immunization, 3) short-term, cash flow matching, and 4) pension risk transfers. Not surprisingly, we have some thoughts about each.
Reducing investment volatility – Segal suggests in this strategy that plan sponsors simply reduce risk by just shifting assets to “high-quality” fixed income. Yes, the annual standard deviation of an investment grade bond portfolio with a duration similar to that of the BB Aggregate would have a lower volatility than equities, but it continues to have great uncertainty since bond performance is driven primarily by interest rates. Who knows where rates are going in this environment?
Liability Immunization – The article mentions that some plan sponsors are taking advantage of the higher rate environment by “immunizing” a portion of the plan’s liabilities. They describe the process as a dedicated portfolio of high-quality bonds matched to cover a portion of the projected benefits. They mentioned that this strategy tends to be long-term in nature. They also mention that because it is “longer-term” it carries more default risk. Finally, they mentioned that this strategy may lose some appeal because of the inverted yield curve presently observed. Let me comment: 1) Immunization is neither a long-term strategy or a short-term strategy. The percentage of liabilities “covered” is a function of multiple factors, 2) yes, immunization or cash flow matching’s one concern when using corporate bonds is default risk. According to S&P, the default rate for IG bonds is 0.18% for the last 40-years, and 3) bond math tells us that the longer the maturity and the higher the yield, the lower the cost. Depending on the length of the assignment, the current inverted yield curve would not provide a constraint on this process. Finally, CFM is dependent on the actuary’s forecasts of contributions, benefits, and expenses. Any change in those forecasts must be reflected in the portfolio. As such, CFM is a dynamic process.
Short-term, cash flow matching – CFM is the same as immunization, whether short-term or not. Yes, it is very popular strategy for multiemployer plans that received Special Financial Assistance (SFA) under ARPA for obvious reasons. It is a strategy that SECURES the promised benefits at both low cost and with prudent risk. It maximizes the benefit coverage period with the least uncertainty.
Pension Risk Transfers (PRT) – In a PRT, the plan sponsor transfers a portion of the liabilities, if not all of them, to an insurance company. This is the ultimate risk reduction strategy for the plan sponsor, but is it best for the participant? They do point out that reducing a portion of the liabilities will also reduce the PBGC premiums. But, does it impact the union’s ability to retain and attract their workers?
We believe that every DB pension plan should engage in CFM. The benefits are impressive from dramatically improving liquidity, to buying time for the growth (non-CFM bonds) assets, to eliminating interest rate risk for those assets engage in CFM, to helping to stabilize contributions and more. Focusing 100% of the assets on a performance objective only guarantees volatility. It is time to adopt a new strategy before markets once again behave badly. Don’t waste this wonderful rate environment.
I recently attended a public pension conference in which the following question was asked: What is the appropriate weighting to emerging markets? There may be an average exposure that results from a review of all public fund data, but there is NO such thing as an appropriate or standard weight. Given that every defined benefit plan has its own unique liabilities, funded status, ability to contribute, etc., how could there be a standard exposure to any asset class, let alone emerging markets.
I’m sure that this question originates through the belief that the pension objective is to achieve a return on asset (ROA) assumption. That there is some magic combination of assets and weightings that will enable the pension plan to achieve the return target. However, as regular readers of this blog know, we, at Ryan ALM, think that the primary objective when managing a DB pension plan is NOT a return objective but it is to SECURE the promised benefits at a reasonable cost and with prudent risk.
Pursuing a performance (return) objective guarantees volatility, as the annual standard deviation for a pension plan is roughly 12%-15%, but not success in meeting the funding objective. Refocusing on the liabilities secures, through cash flow matching, the monthly promises from the first month out as far as the allocation will cover. Through this process the necessary liquidity is provided each month, while also extending the investing horizon for the remainder of the assets that are no longer needed as a source of liquidity. We refer to these residual assets as the alpha or growth assets, that now can grow unencumbered.
This growth bucket can be invested almost anyway that you want. You can decide to just buy the S&P 500 index at low fees or construct a more intricate asset allocation with exposures and weightings of your choice. There is no one size fits all solution. We do suggest that the better the funded ratio/status of your plan, the greater the allocation to the liquidity assets. If your plan is less well funded today, start with a more modest CFM portfolio, and expand it as funding levels improve. In any case, you are bringing an element of certainty to what has been historically a very uncertain process.
So, please remember that every DB plan is unique. Don’t let anyone tell you that your fund needs to have X% in asset class A or Y% in asset class B. Securing the benefits should be the most important decision. How you build the alpha portfolio will be a function of so many other factors related specifically to your plan.
We challenge you to find Pension Liabilities in any Generic Bond Index. We’re confident that you won’t. As a result, we’ve developed an appropriate solution, which we call the Custom Liability Index (CLI).
Pension liabilities (benefits and expenses (B+E)) are unique to each plan sponsor… different workforces, different longevity characteristics, different salaries, benefits, expenses, contributions, inflation assumptions, plan amendments, etc. To capture and calculate the true liability objective, the Ryan team created the first CLI in 1991 as the proper pension benchmark for asset liability management (ALM). We take the actuarial projections of (B+E) for each client and then subtract forecasted Contributions since contributions are the initial source to fund B+E. This net total becomes the true liability cash flows that assets have to fund. We then calculate the monthly liability cash flows as (B+E) – C. The CLI is a monthly report that includes the calculations of:
Net future values broken out by term structure
Net present values broken out by term structure
Total returns broken out by term structure
Summary statistics (yield, duration, etc.)
Interest rate sensitivity
We recommend that the Ryan ALM CLI be installed as the index benchmark for total assets, as well as any bond program dedicated to matching assets and liabilities. This action should be the first step in asset allocation. The CLI can be broken out into any time segment that bond assets are directed to fund (i.e. 1-3 years, 1-10 years, etc.). Moreover, total assets should be compared versus total liabilities to know if the funded ratio and funded status have improved over time. If all asset managers outperform their generic index benchmarks but lose to liability growth rate the pension plan loses and must pay a higher contribution.
Since the CLI is a monthly report, plan sponsors can compare assets versus liabilities monthly. Furthermore, we suggest that there should never be an investment update of just assets versus assets (generic index benchmarks), which unfortunately is common practice today. It is hard to understand in today’s sophisticated finance world why liabilities are missing as a pension index. It should be clear that no generic bond index could ever properly represent the liability cash flows that assets are required to fund. It is apples versus oranges, at a minimum.
“Given the wrong index benchmark… you will get the wrong risk/reward”
For more info on the Ryan ALM CLI please contact Russ Kamp, CEO at rkamp@ryanalm.com
My 44-year career in the investment industry has been focused on DB pension plans, in roles as both a consultant and an investment manager (I’ve also served as a trustee). I’ve engaged in 000s of conversations related to the management of DB pension plans covering the good, the bad, and even the ugly! I’ve published more than 1,600 mostly pension-related posts on this blog with the specific goal to provide education. I hope that some of my insights have proven useful. Managing a DB pension plan, whether a private, public, or a multiemployer plan is challenging. As a result, I’ve always felt that it was important to challenge the status quo with the aim to help protect and preserve DB pensions for all.
Unfortunately, I continue to think that many aspects of pension management are wrong – sorry. Here are some of the concerns:
Why do we have two different accounting standards (FASB and GASB) in the U.S. for valuing pension liabilities?
Why does it make sense to value liabilities at a rate (ROA) that can’t be purchased to defease pension liabilities in this interest rate environment?
Why do we continue to create an asset allocation framework that only guarantees volatility and not success?
Why do we think that the pension objective is a return objective (ROA) when it is the liabilities (benefits) that need to be funded and secured?
Why haven’t we realized that plowing tons of plan assets into an asset class/strategy will negatively impact future returns?
Why are we willing to pay ridiculous sums of money in asset management fees with no guaranteed outcome?
Why is liquidity to meet benefits an afterthought until it becomes a major issue?
Why does it make sense that two plans with wildly different funded ratios have the same ROA?
Why are plan sponsors willing to live with interest rate risk in the core bond allocations?
Why do we think that placing <5% in any asset class is going to make a difference on the long-term success of that plan?
Why do we think that moving small percentages of assets among a variety of strategies is meaningful?
Why do we think that having a funded ratio of 80% is a successful outcome?
Why are we incapable of rethinking the management of pensions with the goal to bring an element of certainty to the process, especially given how humans hate uncertainty?
WHY, WHY, WHY?
If some of these observations resonate with you, and you are as confused as I am with our current approach to DB pension management, try cash flow matching (CFM) a portion of your plan. With CFM you’ll get a product that SECURES the promised benefits at low cost and with prudent risk. You will have a carefully constructed liquidity bucket to meet benefits and expenses when needed – no forced selling in challenging market environments. Importantly, your investing horizon will be extended for the growth (alpha) assets that haven’t been used to defease liabilities. We know that by “buying time” (extending the investment horizon) one dramatically improves the probability of a successful outcome.
Furthermore, your pension plan’s funded status will be stabilized for that portion of the assets that uses CFM. This is a dynamic asset allocation process that should respond to improvement in the plan’s funded status. Lastly, you will be happy to sit back because you’ve SECURED the near-term liquidity needed to fund the promises and just watch the highly uncertain markets unfold knowing that you don’t have to do anything except sleep very well at night.
The true objective of a pension is to secure and fully fund benefits (and expenses) in a cost-efficient manner with prudent risk. Although funding liabilities (benefits and expenses (B+E)) is the pension objective, it is hard to find liabilities in anything that pertains to pension assets. Asset allocation is more focused on achieving a ROA (return on assets target return), and performance measurement compares assets versus assets, as the asset index benchmarks are void of any liability growth calculations. If you outperform your index benchmark does that mean asset growth exceeded liability growth? Perhaps NOT.
Pension liabilities behave like bonds since their discount rate is most similar to a zero-coupon bond yield curve (especially ASC 715 discount rates which are a AA corporate yield curve). Yes, public and multiemployer pension plans use the ROA as the discount rate to price their liabilities but even then it is not shown in any performance measurement reports. In fact, what shows up in the CAFR annual report is the GASB requirement of an interest rate sensitivity test by moving the discount rate up and down 100 basis points to determine the volatility of the present value of liabilities and the funded ratio. But a total return or growth rate comparison of assets versus liabilities seems to be MIA.
Ryan ALM solves this problem through our asset liability management (ALM) suite of synergistic products:
Custom Liability Index (CLI) – The management of assets should actually start with liabilities. In reality, assets need to fund NET liabilities defined as (benefits + expenses) – contributions. Contributions are the first source to fund B+E. Assets must fund the net or residual. This is never calculated so assets start with little or no knowledge of what there job really is. Moreover, B+E are monthly payments, which are also not calculated, as the actuary provides an annual update. The CLI performs all of these calculations including total return and interest rate sensitivity as monthly reports.
ASC 715 Discount Rates – Ryan ALM is one of very few vendors who provide ASC 715 discount rates, and we’ve done so since FAS 158 was enacted (2006). We provide a zero-coupon yield curve of AA corporate bonds as a monthly excel file for our subscribers including a Big Four accounting firm and several actuarial firms.
Liability Beta Portfolio™ (LBP) – The LBP is the proprietary cash flow matching model of Ryan ALM. The LBP is a portfolio of investment grade bonds whose cash flows match and fully fund the monthly liability cash flows of B+E. Our LBP has many benefits including reducing funding costs by about 2% per year (20% for 1-10 year liabilities). The intrinsic value of bonds is the certainty of their cash flows. That is why bonds have always been chosen as the assets for cash flow matching or dedication since the 1970s. We believe that bonds are not performance or growth assets but liquidity assets. By installing a LBP, pensions can remove a cash sweep from the growth assets, which negatively impact their growth rates. We urge pension plan sponsors to use bonds for their cash flow value and transfer the bond allocation from a total return focus to a liquidity allocation. Moreover, the Ryan ALM LBP product is skewed to A/BBB+ corporate bonds which should outyield the traditional bond manager who is usually managing versus an index which is heavily skewed to Treasuries and higher rated securities that are much lower in yield. The LBP should enhance the probability of achieving the ROA by the extra yield advantage (usually 75 to 100 basis points). The LBP should also reduce the volatility of the funded ratio and contributions. In fact, it should help reduce contribution cost by the extra yield enhancement.
For more info on the Ryan ALM product line, please contact Russ Kamp at rkamp@ryanalm.com.
Bonds are the only asset class with the certainty of its cash flows. That is why bonds have always been used to cash flow match and defease liabilities. Given this certainty, bonds provide a secure way to reduce the cost to fund liabilities. This benefit is not as transparent or valued as one might think. If you could save 20% to 50% on almost anything, most people would jump at the opportunity? But when it comes to pre-funding pension liabilities there seems to be a hesitation to capture this prudent benefit.
Bond math tells us that the higher the yield and the longer the maturity… the lower the cost. Usually there is a positive sloping yield curve such that when you extend maturity you pick up yield. What may not be evident is the fact that extending maturity is the best way to reduce costs even if yields were not increased. Here are examples of what it would cost to fund a $100,000 liability payment with a bond(s) whose maturity matches the liability payment date:
Cost savings is measured as the difference between Cost and the liability payment of $100k. As you can see, extending maturity produces a much greater cost reduction than an increase in yield. More importantly, the cost reduction is significant no matter what maturity you invest at, even if yields are unchanged. The cost savings range from 21.9% (5-years) to 38.1% (10-years) and 62.8% (20-years) with rates unchanged. Why wouldn’t a pension want to reduce funding costs by 21.9% to 62.8% with certainty instead of using bonds for a volatile and uncertain total return objective? Given the large asset bases in many pensions, such a funding cost reduction should be a primary budget consideration.
Ryan ALM is a leader in Cash Flow Matching (CFM) through our proprietary Liability Beta Portfolio™ (LBP) model. We believe that the intrinsic value in bonds is the certainty of their cash flows. We urge pensions to transfer their fixed income allocation from a total return objective versus a generic market index (whose cash flows look nothing like the clients’ liability cash flows) to a CFM strategy. The benefits are numerous:
Secures benefits for time horizon LBP is funding (1-10 years)
Buys time for alpha assets to grow unencumbered
Reduces Funding costs (roughly 2% per year)
Reduces Volatility of Funded Ratio/Status
Reduces Volatility of Contribution costs
Outyields active bond management
Mitigates Interest Rate Risk
Low fee = 15 bps
For more info on our Cash Flow Matching model (LBP) or a free analysis to highlight what CFM can do for your plan, please contact Russ Kamp, CEO at rkamp@ryanalm.com
The title of this post could be used to discuss any number of uncertainties that we are currently facing including geopolitical risk, economic risks associated with potentially disruptive policies, to the economic burdens faced by many Americans. I’ve chosen to apply this title to the prospect that America’s sponsors of defined benefit plans may not be offloading those pension liabilities with the rapidity that they’ve shown in the last decade or so.
There recently appeared an article in PlanSponsor titled, “Fewer Plan Sponsors Terminating DB Plans Amid Risk Management Shifts”. Again, one can only hope that this trend continues. “Half of plan sponsors do not intend to terminate their DB plans, up from 36.7% in 2023 and 28.3% in 2021, according to Mercer’s 2025 CFO Survey,” The survey was based on response from 173 senior finance officers. Unfortunately, it doesn’t undo the harm wrought by all the previous DB terminations, but it is still wonderful news for the American workforce!
As I’ve reported previously, Milliman’s monthly index of the Top 100 corporate plans currently shows a 104.1% funded ratio. Managing surplus assets is now the focus for many of these pension plans. Generating pension earnings, as opposed to living with the burden of pension expense will change one’s perspective. In Ron Ryan’s excellent book, titled, “The U.S. Pension Crisis”, he attributes a lot of the crisis to the accounting rules. For many corporations, pension expenses became a drag on earnings. Sure, they might have said that the company’s primary focus was manufacturing XYZ product and not managing a pension, but the costs associated with managing a DB plan certainly weighed heavily on the decision to freeze, terminate, and eventually transfer the plan.
Now that companies are sitting with a surplus leading to pension earnings, they are reluctant to shift those assets to an insurance company. According to the Mercer survey “70.1% reporting they have implemented dynamic de-risking strategies, an increase of nearly 10 percentage points from 2023. Additionally, 44% have boosted allocations to fixed-income assets to stabilize their funded status.” Let’s hope that they just haven’t engaged a duration strategy to mitigate some of the interest rate sensitivity. As we’ve stated, cash flow matching is a superior strategy to duration matching as every month of the coverage period is duration matched and you get the liquidity as a bonus to meet monthly distributions. Moreover, the Ryan ALM model will outyield ASC 715 discount rates which should enhance pension income or reduce pension expense.
Clearly, this is a positive trend, but we are far from out of the woods in preserving DB pensions. Unfortunately, plan sponsors are still considering risk transfers which continue to “dominate strategic discussions”, as more than 70% of organizations plan to offer lump-sum payments to some portion of their plan beneficiaries in the next two years.” The American workforce is far more interested these days in securing their golden years and a DB plan is the best way to accomplish that objective.
I touched on the subject of hedge funds a few years ago. Unfortunately, results haven’t gotten any better. Yet, P&I is reporting that Hedge Fund assets have reached an all-time high of $5.7 trillion. My simple question – WHY?
I believe that we have overcomplicated the management of DB pension plans and the use of hedge funds is a clear example. If the primary objective is to fund the promised benefits in a cost-efficient manner with prudent risk, why do we continue to waste so much energy buying complicated, opaque products and strategies that often come with ridiculously high fees and little alpha? Furthermore, the management of a DB pension plan has a relative objective – funding the plan’s liabilities of benefits and expenses. It is not an absolute objective which is what a hedge fund strives to produce. It really doesn’t matter if a hedge fund produces a 5% 10-year return if liability growth far exceeds that performance.
Here’s the skinny, the HFRI Composite index reveals that the 10- and 20-year compounded returns are 5.0% and 5.1%, respectively through March 31, 2025. We know that we didn’t get those “robust” returns at either an efficient cost or with prudent risk. What are these products hedging other than returns? Why do we continue to invest in this collection of overpriced and underperforming products? Are they sexy? Does that make them more appealing? Do we think that we are getting a magic elixir that will solve all of our funding issues?
Sadly, the story is even worse when you take a gander at the returns associated with the HFRI Hedge Fund of Funds Composite Index. I shouldn’t have been surprised by the weaker performance given the extra layer of fees. According to HFRI, 10- and 20-year annualized returns fall to 3.5% and 3.3%, respectively. UGH! For those two time frames, the S&P 500 produced returns of 12.5% and 10.2% respectively, and for a few basis points in fees. Furthermore, as U.S. interest rates have risen, bond returns have become competitive with the returns produced by HFs and HF of Funds. In fact, during the 1-year period both T-bills (4.9%) and the BB Aggregate index (5.2%) have outperformed HFs (4.6%), while matching or exceeding the HF of Funds (4.9%) as of March 31, 2025.
While pension systems struggle under growing contribution expenses and plan participants worry about the viability of the pension promise, the hedge fund gurus get to buy sports franchises because of the outrageous fees that are charged and the incredible sums of assets (again, $5.7 trillion!!!) that have been thrown at them? I suspect that the standard fee is no longer 2% plus 20%, but the fees probably haven’t fallen too far from those levels. As Fred Schwed asked with his famous publication in 1952 titled, “Where are the Customers’ Yachts?”, I haven’t been able to find them. Unfortunately, I think that the picture below is more representative of what plan sponsors and the participants have gotten for their investment.
Participant’s yacht – deflated results
Don’t you think that it is time to get back to pension basics? Let’s focus on funding the promised benefits through an enhanced liquidity strategy (cash flow matching) for a portion of the plan’s assets, while allowing the remainder of the portfolio’s assets to enjoy the benefit of time to grow unencumbered (extended investing horizon). This bifurcated approach is superior to the current strategy of placing all of your eggs (assets) into a ROA bucket and hoping that the combination will create a return commensurate with what is needed to meet those current Retired Lives Benefit promises and all future benefits and expenses.
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