Alcoa Corp., Pittsburgh, purchased additional group annuity contracts from Athene Holding subsidiaries to transfer about $500 million in U.S. pension plan liabilities.
The aluminum company will complete the transfer to the two unnamed Athene subsidiaries later this month, according to an 8-K filing with the SEC Tuesday.
The transaction affects about 2,600 participants in Alcoa's U.S. pension plans, and the Athene subsidiaries will take on the responsibility of paying benefits later in December, the filing said.
The filing does not disclose whether the participants are retirees and beneficiaries, the number of contracts, names of Athene subsidiaries or how the population was determined.
The new contracts come quickly on the heels of two previous annuity contract purchases from Athene subsidiaries that transferred about $1 billion in U.S. pension plan liabilities, announced in November.
Those previous transactions affected about 11,200 retirees and beneficiaries in Alcoa's U.S. pension plans.
In the past year, Alcoa has completed a series of pension risk transfer transactions to derisk its global pension plans.
In October, Alcoa agreed to purchase a group annuity contract to transfer about $55 million in pension plan assets to an undisclosed insurer.
That agreement is set to transfer the benefit-paying responsibility for about 800 retirees and former employees in one of the company's pension plans in Suriname, the aluminum company disclosed in its latest 10-Q filing with the SEC.
Starting on Jan. 1, 2021, Alcoa froze the defined benefit plans for its U.S. and Canadian salaried employees and moved the 800 affected employees to country-specific defined contribution plans. In 2018, Alcoa purchased a group annuity contract from Athene Annuity and Life Co. to transfer about $290 million in U.S. pension plan liabilities.
As of Dec. 31, Alcoa's global pension plan assets totaled $5.356 billion, while projected benefit obligations totaled $6.904 billion, for a funding ratio of 77.6%, according to its most recent 10-K filing with the SEC.
Alcoa spokesman Jim W. Beck declined to provide information beyond what was provided in the filing.
