Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation December 2, 2005 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is amending its benefit valuation regulation by adopting more current mortality assumptions. The mortality assumptions prescribed under PBGC's regulations to be used to value benefits for non-disabled (``healthy'') participants are taken from the 1983 Group Annuity Mortality (GAM-83) Tables. The PBGC published a final rule adopting these tables in 1993, noting that many private-sector insurers used the GAM-83 Tables when setting group annuity prices. At that time, the PBGC also said that it intended to keep each of its individual valuation assumptions in line with those of private-sector insurers, and to modify its mortality assumptions whenever it is necessary to do so to achieve consistency with the private insurer assumptions. This rule updates those assumptions by replacing a version of the GAM-83 Tables with a version of the GAM-94 Tables. The updated mortality assumptions will better conform to those used by private-sector insurers in pricing group annuities.