From the Executive Editor

Hi there. I am writing this on September 15, so you all know my mental state. But the craziness is over, at least for five seconds until I shift my attention to the September 30 AFTAP certification deadline. I personally had a great summer, despite the hectic last few weeks, and I hope you all did too. 

Back in July the IRS issued guidance that curtailed the risk transfer technique of offering lump sums to participants receiving annuities. This generated a lot of discussion on the ACOPA listserve, so I asked John Frederick, one of the contributors to that conversation, to write an article to delve into the guidance and questions it creates. John’s article is here.

One of my usual summer highlights is to attend the ACOPA Symposium in Chicago. It’s always an excellent interactive meeting that I look forward to. I was unable to attend this year but asked Roman Androsov, one of my colleagues at Summit who attended the symposium, to write up a summary of the meeting for this edition. Roman could hardly refuse my generous request since I had paid for him to attend. His excellent writeup is here.

The ACOPA listserve always generates many interesting conversations. One lively discussion that took place this summer related to the question of actuaries who provide services to outside firms, and what firm name they should show on the Schedule SB. Mike Preston and I had a rather spirited debate about whether it’s a misrepresentation for an actuary to show the name of a firm that does not directly employ them. So to teach Mike a lesson about arguing with me, I asked him to write an article about the issue, and his writeup about this serious question is here. If you have any thoughts on this issue, send them to me and I’ll publish them in a future edition.

ACOPA Executive Director Judy Miller is always hard at work coordinating with the GAC committee on pressing IRS on the need for more guidance. I guess we should be happy that IRS just released the final 430 regulations, seven years after the proposed regulations — World War II did not take as long. Judy’s report on the current issues they are pushing is here.

For an update on what the ACOPA Leadership Council is working on, Lynn Young and Karen Smith have provided us with an update that details the long term planning currently underway to strengthen and enhance ACOPA’s profile, here.

If you have any ideas for articles or content, or want to contribute, email me at [email protected].

Cheers and onward to October!