New Pension Investment Disclosure Rules a Reality

Posted on July 17, 2008 by Susan Mangiero

Unhappy auditors and plan sponsors may be roaring in response to the outcome of yesterday's FASB board meeting. In case you missed it, Norwalk-based accounting rulemakers opine in favor of enhanced asset risk disclosures. Despite industry arguments to the counter, FASB concludes that benefits outweigh costs, citing credit-related large losses as a factor in their decision to enhance plan transparency.

As stated in our July 15, 2008 post ("FASB Meets to Unlock Pension Investment Risk Information"), critics offer that FAS 132(R) compliance entails time-consuming data collection and analysis, across asset categories and fund managers and, in some cases, for multiple corporate entities. According to CFO.com reporter Marie Leone, FASB chairman Bob Herz (himself a former pension fiduciary) favors layers of information. A plan that allocates four out of every ten dollars to equities would be asked to disclose industry and sector concentrations as follows:

  • 40% in equities
  • 25% of that 40% in pharma
  • 50% of that 25% in high-growth pharma stocks.

Leone adds that FASB board members unanimously dismissed the need for a materiality guidance rule, also concluding that "drilling down to the underlying assets that make up mutual funds, trusts, and fund of funds was not necessary" as long as qualitative text is provided to financial statement users. Click to read "One Step Forward on Pension Disclosures" by Marie Leone (CFO.com, July 16, 2008).

Click to access the FASB audio file for "Disclosures about plan assets" (July 16, 2008 FASB board meeting). Noteworthy is the discussion about what constitutes an "optimal" level of granularity, while acknowledging that some fund managers are VERY reluctant to say too much about how they invest.

Call me circumspect but one wonders whether point in time qualitative information would be better replaced with a description (even if somewhat broad) of risk management and valuation policies and procedures for (a) the plan sponsor and (b) external money managers, respectively.

Process is extremely important. An investment may not return much over a given period(s). However, if financial statement users know that a plan sponsor (and/or asset managers, in the case of outsourcing the investment function) is regularly measuring and managing risk, there may be less angst on the part of nervous beneficiaries and shareholders.

What an interested party does not know (and can't control or influence as a result) is a sure way to lose sleep.

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FASB Meets to Unlock Pension Investment Risk Information

Posted on July 15, 2008 by Susan Mangiero

The Financial Accounting Standards Board ("FASB") meets on July 16, 2008 to discuss how much investment-related information pension plans should disclose to the public. Following the "exposure" of Statement 132(R) on March 18, 2008, industry participants weigh in about the feasibility of compliance. In its 17-page summary of comment letters, FASB notes disagreement among respondents with respect to the need for asset categorization. Some suggest the use of Form 5500 as a guide to the proper delineation of asset investment risks. (As mentioned elsewhere in this blog, we take issue with the Form 5500 as a meaningful guide for economic risk assessment purposes.) 

Surprising to this blogger, only one other organization (Eli Lilly) besides Pension Governance, LLC comment on the need to better understand a reporting entity's process. In our May 2, 2008 letter, we suggest  that accounting rules "require plan sponsors to describe how it decided on a particular concentration, who monitors the concentrations, what triggers a breach, and what happens when a concentration is exceeded."

Regarding fair value, several companies aver that such disclosures would "provide little information to users because annual postretirement benefit cost is based on the expected return on plan assets rather than the actual return." In stark contrast, note that the U.S. Department of Labor is holding hearings today about "hard to value" assets held by ERISA plans.

More than a few respondents claim that the costs of gathering, and then analyzing, requisite information will outweigh the benefits, especially for those companies with geographically dispersed benefit plans. Others cite problems related to assets held by "multiple trustees in pooled asset accounts" whereby the "look through" process cannot be done by a "trustee with partial information, and the employer may not have the skills or proper information to do so."

A key question remains - If something like FAS 132(R) is not adopted, what do critics propose in its place? At a time when more and more plans allocate monies to complex securities and/or funds with less than full transparency, is it sufficient for fiduciaries to simply say "trust me" and assume that disclosure of investment risk is unwarranted? That may be a lot to ask of plan participants who are already nervous about their financial futures.

Editor's Notes: Click to read "Postretirement Benefit Plan Asset Disclosures - Comment Letter Summary" (FASB). Click to access comment letters submitted by various organizations (including Pension Governance, LLC) about "Employers' Disclosures about Postretirement Benefit Plan Assets."

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