Pension Trustees Ask SCOTUS for Actuary Discretion on Exit Bills

Actuaries calculating what employers owe when they exit multiemployer pension plans are empowered to use their “best estimate” of the plan’s experience without being constrained by rigid deadlines, pension trustees told the US Supreme Court.

Federal pension law sets only two requirements for the actuarial assumptions used to calculate an employer’s withdrawal liability: the assumptions must be reasonable and must represent the actuary’s best estimate of the plan’s anticipated experience, the trustees of the IAM National Pension Fund told the justices in a Tuesday brief. There’s no legal requirement that these assumptions be in place by a certain time ...