OR PRACTICE—Assisting Defined-Benefit Pension Plans

The defined-benefit pension system poses substantial, long-term risks for the U.S. economy. We describe a flexible asset-liability management (ALM) system for pension planning. The primary goals are to improve the performance and survivability of the pension trust. We first employ a stochastic program for enhancing investment strategies in light of company and other goals and pension risk constraints. The results are linked with a policy simulator for further analysis. We illustrate the concepts via two disparate real-world companies. The first is a slowly growing auto company, and the second a profitable pharmaceutical enterprise. We show that a stochastic program can help in the process of discovering sound policy rules. The ALM system has been employed extensively throughout the world by a large global actuarial firm.