Financial economics holds that payment streams should be valued using discount rates that reflect the cash flows’ risks. In the case of pension liabilities, the appropriate discount rate for a pension fund's liabilities is the expected rate of return on a portfolio that would be held under a liability-driven investment policy. The valuation of defined benefit pension obligations involves choices revolving around deciding: (1) what future benefit payments to recognize today (i.e., which liability concept to use); and (2) from whose point of view to value the liabilities. Moving towards modeling, the distribution of future liabilities using a ‘risk-neutral’ framework, would allow for calculating the present value of the future liabilities more accurately. This would provide policymakers with information more relevant for the decision-making, and it would also permit easier communication of the risks facing the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation's PIMS model via a single univariate statistic.
