Defined Benefits

Provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that go into effect Sept. 9 have many pension funds concerned, perhaps unnecessarily.

Experts say the best way for cities and states to get out from under crippling pension debt is to close their pension plans to new hires and move employees to lower-cost defined contribution plans. But there are additional ways to fix the problem.

A list of reforms to help fix the public pension crisis in America today.

Defined benefit pension plans have outperformed defined contribution plans in many years since the mid-1990s, according to a study by Towers Watson.

The headlines were mostly about Americans lack of confidence in their prospects for a financially secure retirement when the latest Retirement Confidence Survey was released earlier this year.

While only 6 percent of those surveyed say their companies have already transferred their defined benefit plan risk to a third-party insurer, about 40 percent say they will consider doing so within the next two years.