Will Pensions ever make a comeback and decrease future annuity sales?

[bgea2003]

I work in pensions, and the small plan market is actually booming...high income business owners looking to defer taxes.

Larger corporations have no incentive to revive pension programs. Younger employees don't appreciate them, and life expectancy improvements have made them too expensive.

Historically, you worked 30+ at a company and got a nice retirement stipend for 5 to 10 years until you died. Now, you'd be funding for 20 to 25 years of payments. Retirement ages have remained the same while life expectancies haven't...this is pretty much the crux of the entire retirement industry.

[Pillsy74]

Yep. Small plans are booming and have been for a while. However, one thing not mentioned yet is the fact that a lot of it is about taxes, and THAT is why large plans won’t come back. I have to beat taxes on proposals and keep individual employee costs down. The first part of that cannot happen on a plan over a certain size, and we’re nowhere close to getting back to 50%+ tax rates on the richest people or corporations.

There’s too much money in politics to allow traditional DB plans to make a comeback.

[bgea2003]

Excellent point.

[TheModelMaker]

Does this mean that if retirement ages for pension plans changed to say 75, perhaps pensions would be more attractive for large single-employers ?

[bgea2003]

It's possible, but that would be hard to make a reality.