Actuaries and asset owners have gone from famine to feast on a paper about applying financial economics to valuing pension liabilities.
At first no paper on the topic was to see the light of day. Then one paper was posted. Then a second paper was posted. And soon a third paper will be posted.
The Society of Actuaries on Sept. 6 posted a draft of the paper, “Financial Economics Principles Applied to Public Pension Plans,” on its website.
The society posted the draft version of the 2015 paper without the approval of its four co-authors and deleted their names from the paper. The posting came after the SOA and the American Academy of Actuaries together announced Aug. 1 they were prohibiting any posting or publication of the paper and banned the authors from doing so.
The two actuarial groups claim the copyright of the paper.
On Sept. 12 the co-authors, despite the copyright claim, posted what Jeremy Gold, consulting actuary, said is an updated version of the paper. Their version lists all of the co-authors — Ed Bartholomew, Mr. Gold, David G. Pitts and Larry Pollack. Mr. Gold said the updated paper reflects a more refined version.
Thomas F. Wildsmith IV, president of the Washington-based academy, and president and senior manager of public policy at Aetna Inc., announced Aug. 22 the academy “will shortly be publishing a paper on public pension plans that will include concepts from financial economics.” He gave no time frame.
In its posting Sept. 6, the SOA, which tried to keep the paper out of sight, called the draft paper “important and worthy of presentation and discussion,” saying it “reflects the perspective of knowledgeable actuaries and other individuals.”
