Dylan Porter, principal and actuary, Buck Consultants, told Variety in an interview Tuesday on Capital Hill that they would try to accelerate the completion of the report in four months.
“We are actually helping this week and see if we could accelerate that. Actually our goal is to finish collecting all the data within about month. I didn’t want to promise in advance. We have to make sure we get the data,” Porter said.
Porter told Variety that they are looking at producing the actuarial report for 2010 as quickly in two to three months from now — if all the data comes in.
He told Variety that the work on the valuation begins after the Fund audit is done, after all the employee data has been collected.
For the current valuation report, Porter said the bottleneck was with the collection of employee data.
With the Fund switching to a new data system, Porter said the gathering of the employee data “is our starting point. It takes about six weeks.”
“This year collecting employee data was the last piece of the puzzle to come in,” he said.
In Buck Consultants latest actuarial valuation report, the Fund’s total accrued benefits reached $911.18 million, an increase of $11.75 million from its Oct. 1, 2008 value of $899.44 million.
As of 2009, there were 2,996 active participants or 13 percent decrease from the 2008 total of 3,433.
There were also fewer participants to the Fund receiving benefits, declining from 3,184 to 2,940.
For 2009, the Fund had a total of 6,079 participants compared to 6,768 in 2008.
Valuation assets were $353.48 million in 2009: $226.82 million for Class 1 and $126.65 million for Class II.
Unfunded accrued liability, according to the report, was $591.78 million: $79.68 million for Class I and $512.10 million for Class II.
Accrued liability as of Oct. 1, 2009 was $224.32 million for active members: $177.08 million (Class I) and $47.23 million (Class II).
For retirees and beneficiaries, the accrued liability was $713.94 million: $124.60 million (Class I) and $589.34 million (Class II).
Moreover, normal cost — portion of the total cost of future benefits assigned to the current year by the actuarial valuation method—was $7.7 million for employees: $7.1 million or 9.47 percent of payroll (Class I) and $606,029 or 11.29 percent of payroll (Class II).
Normal cost for government, according to the report was $2.80 million or 3.49 percent of payroll.
The Buck Consultants provided a statement of assets for the Fund as of Oct. 1, 2009.
Total invested assets was $341.13 million as of Sept. 30, 2009. Total liabilities was $61.17 million.
As of Sept. 30, 2009, net assets available for the Fund’s benefits was $353.475 million.
In the same period, the Fund paid out $55.20 million for retirement benefits; $1.71 million, disability benefits; $5.74 million, survivor benefits; $62,291, death benefits; $295,713, transfers and rollovers; and $4.84 million, contributions and interest refunded.
From 2007 to 2009, the Fund saw decreasing trend in both employee and employer contributions.
From $60.21 million in 2007, the government’s contributions declined to $52.52 million in 2008 and went further down to $40.133 million in 2009.
For employee contributions, it was $9.7 million in 2007, $9.4 million in 2008, and $8.5 million in 2009.
As for expenses, the Fund spent a total of $69.54 million in 2009: $63 million, benefits; $1.69 million, administrative expenses; and $4.84 million, refunds.
