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ASEA Monthly
NORM: Sal, thanks for doing this interview with the ACOPA e-news. You’re probably the most well known person in the industry because of The ERISA Outline Book, which is everyone’s main reference. Did you just wake up one day and decide, “I’m going to write a 100,000 page book on pensions that...
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Editor’s Note: This is the latest installment in our ongoing series of posts on professionalism.Recently I received a text message from my wife that said, “You should consider taking out the trash in the kitchen.” Now, text messages can struggle to describe tone and can often be interpreted in...
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We have a Treasury Secretary now. Someday soon, we probably will also have a Secretary of Labor. Until there are also some assistants in place – like those for tax policy at Treasury and for EBSA at DOL – those departments won’t be fully functional. Congress is shutting down DOL’s efforts to give...
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First, as I mentioned in the last newsletter, our Membership Committee is organizing a membership drive at the Enrolled Actuaries Meeting, April 2-5, 2017. There will be a similar drive at annual Western Benefits Conference, July 9-12, 2017, in Anaheim, CA. Anyone who is attending the Enrolled...
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While curtailments and settlements can occur in other situations, this two-part article discusses how curtailments and settlements work specifically with regard to plan terminations. A plan termination generally involves a curtailment (when benefit accruals are frozen), and a subsequent settlement...
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ACOPA continues to have a good reputation among the other actuarial organizations. While those relationships have been fostered by our leaders, both prior and current, it is also due to the level of professionalism that is exhibited in the work of our members every day. However, with all the...
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First, the Los Angeles Advanced Pension Conference was a great success. Many thanks to our conference committee and ARA staff who make these conferences possible. It never rains in Southern California, but the deluge neither dampened the enthusiasm nor watered down the technical content of the...
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ACOPA GAC has been busy working on a comment letter on the proposed amendment to the 417(e) regulations that was published in November. It’s a relatively short proposal, but it has generated a lot of discussion and some serious concern. The key point that would be made by the amendment is that the...
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Hi there, y’all. I hope February is doing well by you. We’ve finally come out of the unusual harsh weather we’ve had here in Oregon, and the crocuses are already blooming. Knowing that Spring is around the corner is almost enough for me to overcome the gloom of busy season and the misery of...
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Happy New Year to all of you. I hope 2017 is a healthy year for all of you and your families. The e-news took a short winter break, mainly because I was moving my Mom into assisted living and clearing out her apartment and did not have time to put together a December edition. Happily she thinks...
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While curtailments and settlements can occur in other situations, this two-part article will discuss how curtailments and settlements work specifically with regard to plan terminations. A plan termination generally involves a curtailment (when benefit accruals are frozen), and a subsequent...
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I have played golf since I used to take the subway from Manhattan to Brooklyn with my clubs in the early 1990s. My handicap is that I am not athletic (I have a 28 handicap, not too good) but always a very yoga-ish, zen time while playing (so I enjoy that). I was playing two or three times a week (...
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The rest of the EC and I have spent much of the past two months discussing a number of diverse professionalism and membership issues and projects, and I thought I would take this opportunity to speak of these from atop the head of Ozymandias.Three of the other four U.S.-based actuarial...
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Nothing boring about 2017 in Washington. Many practitioners, and plan sponsors, are hoping Trump appointees will pare back, or throw out, regulations and other administrative actions initiated by the previous administration. Most of us will be surprised if there isn’t an executive order on day one...
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Wow, what a week we’ve just had as a country. I’m not going to make any political comments, but I think we can all agree we’re going to be on a roller coaster for a while. And I don’t like roller coasters — they are way too scary for me. Put me on a sport bike on a race track and I ride like a...
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Recently, cash balance designs have emerged in which the HCEs of the sponsor receive a lower interest credit rate for their hypothetical accounts than do the NHCEs. This is done frequently as a compromise for sponsors that wish to provide a realistic account return for employees while limiting the...
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Hello, ACOPA peeps! It’s early November, and I recently returned from the 2016 ASPPA Annual Conference, where it was great to see many of you! I had the honor of co-chairing the conference this year as we celebrated ASPPA’s 50th anniversary. After six years of conference planning, I’m retiring from...
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The issue of a successor employer and whether it must be aggregated for IRC Section 415 purposes with a predecessor employer is a fairly common situation when a professional entity such as a law firm operates for many years in a particular form (e.g., sole prop or LLC) and then later becomes part...
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We wanted to provide an update on some ACOPA projects.First, in the December issue you will see an article by the Chair of our Professionalism Committee, Lynn Young, and the projects the committee has been working on. I leave it to her to fill you in on the details, but let me say one thing: the...
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My guess is you are already counting up your hours to make sure you will have your CE in by the end of this year, but what if you won’t make it? Do you have enough ethics credits? “Formal” education? What qualifies for ethics credit, anyway? Most of us were first enrolled before Jan. 1, 2014, so...
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