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HomeMy WebLinkAboutPension & Audit Committee August 20, 2019 PENSION & AUDIT COMMISSION CHAMBER COMMITTEE August 20, 2019 PRESENT: Hons. Hardie Davis, Jr., Mayor; Sean Frantom, Mayor Pro Tem; Bill Fennoy, Finance Committee Chairman; Jarvis Sims, Interim Administrator; Donna Williams, Finance Director; Lena Bonner, Clerk of Commission. Mr. Mayor: We’re going to call the August 20, 2019 Pension Committee meeting to order. Madam Clerk, as you go through the agenda item, we’ll bring the presenter for number two up first but I’ll yield to you. 2. Presentation of the actuarial reports for 1945 and 1949 Pension Plans. Mr. Karbon: My name is Bill Karbon and I’m from CBIZ and we’re the actuaries for both the 1945 and 1949 plans. I’ve presented you with the valuation reports as of January 1, 2019 for both plans but I just wanted to present the highlights of the reports with the powerpoint that I’ve also presented. What I wanted to talk about today was to go through a couple of items we’ll be looking at between now and our next valuation report with respect to some assumptions, talk about the results on the funding side with respect to both the ’45 and ’49 plans and then also present to you a summary of the GASBY results for the 45 and 49 plan and OPED plan for your financial statement purposes. I wanted to make you aware of a couple issues that will impact future plans and one is over time the Society of Actuaries typically about every ten years or so will develop a new mortality table and they did so in 2014 but when they did that they did not include any governmental employees and what they have now done and released a final version earlier this year are some updated mortality tables just for governmental employees. It’s the first time I know of that that’s been done so we’re in the process of reviewing those mortality tables. They developed three separate tables, one for general employees, one for public safety employees and one for teachers. We would look to probably some combination of the general employees and public safety employees for this purpose but we expect to be reviewing this over the next couple of months and then suggesting that we use these tables for the 2020 funding valuation as well as the 2019 GASBY reports. We’re also going to take a look at the investment return assumption. Historically the way we have development the investment return assumption is to look backwards and say what have been the historical returns in different asset classes. A new approach that’s being done with respect to developing investment return assumptions and that is investment firms are developing capital market assumptions and based on those future looking capital market assumptions and your specific asset classes that you’re in, they would look to develop an expected returns for the plan using your asset reallocation. So we’re expecting to work with your investment advisor in developing and seeing what your expected returns are under different time periods and essentially what they’re doing is doing Monte Carlo simulations under different scenarios and looking forward. Just keep in mind what is a challenge anymore is that the bond markets have very limited returns and for two reasons you have to invest in bonds. One, state law requires it and two, these are mature plans that require enough liquidity to pay out benefit payments so that you do need some investments that are generating cash. So you do have a significant part of your portfolio in bonds which is a drag on return because there’s simply no opportunities in the marketplace with bonds. Just to review the funding requirements. I put this in almost all of my presentations and that is it’s the actuary’s job is to try to develop a way to systematically develop 1 a contribution amount from year to year. And our goal is to develop a contribution amount that remains as stable as possible from one year to the next. But at the end of the day the actuary doesn’t determine the ultimate cost of a plan. The ultimate cost of a plan is the benefits promised. And based on the plan document benefits promised during a life time plan you’re going to pay out a certain amount of benefits and the only thing that’s going to reduce the amount that the County has to put in is investment income. So the total payouts less the investment income over the life of the plan is the total cost of the plan. It’s the actuary’s job is just to try to come up with some systematic approach like I said so that there is, try to limit volatility from year to year as far as your contributions go. Just to go over the demographics of the group and we’ll see the same thing with both the 1945 and 1949 plans in that the populations are driven by the retirees. Especially the ’45 plan. The one active participant is now retired so all participants in the ’45 plan are now retired so you typically have some stability in your population from year to year. You’re not going to see big changes and the average salary and the average age there is just for the one active who is now a retiree. And you’ll see the same thing in the ’49 plan. There are still 17 actives in that plan. There’s eight participants who have terminated and who have reached the age where they can start drawing benefits and then there’s 207 current retirees in that plan. Mr. Mayor: Can you go back to that slide? I want you to go back to your drawing a distinction between those that are vested and drawing retirement from the plan versus the 207 that are “in the plan” retired but not drawing. Mr. Karbon: And the difference is those eight vesteds they terminated employment and were vested but they haven’t reached the age where they can start drawing benefits. The 207 are actually drawing benefits. That’s the difference. Mr. Hasan: The eight even though they haven’t reached retirement age do they continue to put money in? Mr. Karbon: They do not. It’s only the active participants that put money into the plan. Mr. Hasan: Thank you. Mr. Karbon: So as I mentioned earlier it’s the goal of the actuary to try to limit volatility or cost from year to year and one of the ways we do that is every year your asset performance, right now our target is seven and a quarter percent. Some years you’re going to beat that and some years you’re going to underperform, you’re not going to beat it. And what we do is to the extent you beat that seven and a quarter return we have what’s called a gain. We don’t recognize the entire gain. We recognize the gains over a five-year period of time and we do the same thing with a loss. During 2018 your assets instead of generating a seven and a quarter percent return lost somewhere in the neighborhood of five percent. And so in our mind that’s a twelve percent loss because you didn’t make the seven and a quarter and you lost five. But we don’t recognize that immediate loss. We smooth that in over five years. The idea being during a five-year period there’s going to be times when you have gains and sometimes when you have losses and they offset each other over time. So the market value of the 1945 plan assets is $5.5 million but what we’re showing and what we’re using to determine cost is $6.2 million because there are some losses, there are losses in the amount of $665,000 that we haven’t recognized and will be 2 recognizing over time. The goal is for there to be some gains that will offset those losses going into the future. During 2018 we recognized a loss in the ’45 plan of $238,000 because of asset performance. But if you think about it as I mentioned earlier we lost about 12% which is over $700,000 so we’re not recognizing the entire loss this year and that will be recognized over time. Mr. Mayor: So what’s your rationale for a realized loss over time as opposed to now? Mr. Karbon: As I mentioned the goal is to try to stabilize the asset value so you don’t see as much fluctuation from year to year. So we had a loss this year. The hope is that next year you have a gain. Now the two offset each other and we’re hoping over a five-year period there’s gains and losses because otherwise to absorb a 12% loss immediately would have a significant impact on your cost. Mr. Mayor: Okay, so to that end I think it’s reasonable to assume that because of the volatility of the market you’re going to have gains and losses. Mr. Karbon: That’s exactly correct. Mr. Mayor: And you would expect that just as a rule of thumb. Mr. Karbon: Right. Mr. Mayor: But the 12% is that a realized loss or is that not a realized loss? Mr. Karbon: When it comes to market value it is a realized loss. When it comes to what we’re using for funding purposes, we’re not realizing that entire amount. And if you really think about that, some of this could be timing with market value too. Fourth quarter was a terrible time in the marketplace. The next two quarters the assets rebounded and then some and there’s been some very good performance in 2019 so assuming markets remain stable, we’re expecting a gain in 2019 that’ll offset some of the 18’s losses and if we recognize all of that immediately as I mentioned then from year to year the cost would fluctuate. Mr. Mayor: I’m going to come back to that in a minute. Ms. Williams: In regards to the practice of the recognizing the gains and losses over a period of time, is that what we refer to as the assets smoothing – Mr. Karbon: That is correct. Ms. Williams: -- as referred to in the process where we stretch out to avoid the peaks and valleys and it becomes a rounder level of funding for the plan? Mr. Karbon: That is the goal. Ms. Williams: Okay. 3 Mr. Karbon: And if it gets way out of whack we will only go as high as 120% of market value or as low as 80% so that we are going to stay within somewhat reasonable ranges and I will say this is a very standardized approach that you see with respect to actuarial values. Mr. Mayor: Okay, so I’m going to come back to it now. So the effect of what you’re telling me now is you’re dollar cost averaging? Mr. Karbon: Dollar cost averaging that’s really what’s done there is you put your, instead of putting in if your cost is a million dollars instead of putting it in all in one lump sum you put it in one-twelfth every month so that that kind of if there’s good experience one month and poor experience the next, that’s the impact of dollar cost averaging. So there’s a little difference there. Mr. Mayor: Okay, what’s that difference? Mr. Karbon: The dollar cost averaging is about timing of when you put money into the plan. Just the, what we’re doing here with the asset smoothing is how much of a gain or loss we’re recognizing in any one year. Mr. Mayor: So what I’m struggling with is what allows you to artificially do that? What allows you to artificially acknowledge a gain versus a loss because a loss is a loss and a gain is a gain? Mr. Karbon: Well, because timing, it does get involved because if you were to look at your same asset pool on September 30 rather than December 31 it would have been a much different picture. Mr. Mayor: It would have? Mr. Karbon: Yes, much different. The fourth quarter was just, the markets really tanked and then vice versa. If you look at your assets as of June 30 rather than December 31 they would look totally different. So what you don’t want to do is have a significant variance in your contribution level because of timing in the market. Mr. Mayor: I’m going to come back again. Mr. Karbon: Okay. So we do the same thing for the ’49 plan. Basically the same results. We had $65 million of market value, $71 million was the assets used for funding purposes and there was an asset loss of close to $2.3 million. Just to show you in the ’49 plan where the funded status of the plan over the last three years, it went from 87% up to 91 and then basically because of the underperformance of the assets that we saw the funded percentage drop down to about 88%. In a perfect world we’d love to be at 100% but I could tell you being 90 or above the plan is in good shape and doesn’t concern me. Same thing with the ’49 plan. It went from about 81% up to 86 and then once again because of asset performance you see the funded percentage drop a little bit down to 84%. Just to recognize your unfunded liability in the 1945 plan. It went from $635,000 to $801,000. The biggest reason once again for the increase as you can see we had an asset loss of $238,000. What we do also from year to year we look at the liabilities and we say all right, 4 what were the liabilities as of January 1 ’18. What are they as of ’19 and what would they have been if all assumptions were met and that difference, what are the liabilities compared to what they would have been if the assumptions were met and we had a variance of about $87,000 which was about 1% of liabilities this year and every year we have a modest change to the mortality table. We just change our projected mortality a little bit and there was an assumption change increased liabilities by about $15,000. Same type of results for the ’49 plan. The increase in the unfunded from $11.5 million to $13.6 million was primarily driven by the asset performances as well as a modest liability loss as well and then the assumption change. On Slide 16 is the historical required contribution to the ’45 plan. It shows the results from ’17, ’18 and ’19. And the entire cost is driven down by paying the unfunded liability so as I mentioned earlier the unfunded went from $635,000 to $801,000. Because of that now the cost to pay down that unfunded went up from $155,000 to $193,000. And we do the same thing for the ’49 plan and we developed a required contribution based on the requirements of Georgia state law and what the minimum required contributions are and once again we saw the unfunded liability went up from 11.5 to 13.6 so that increased the payment needed to pay down the unfunded from $1.4 million up to $1.76 million and every year we’re going to see a decrease in the employee contributions as the number of active participants decline over a period of time. But we saw that the employer contribution required a contribution of $1.4 million to $1.7 million. What we also do is develop a recommended contribution. The recommended contribution is developed on paying down the unfunded liability more rapidly than what state law requires. For the ’45 we look at paying down the unfunded over a four-year period of time. By decreasing the period of time you’re paying the unfunded the cost on a required basis would be 193 and on a recommended basis would be $292,000 and the idea is try to get the unfunded paid down especially as there’s a potential for some assumption changes that may increase liability so it just should encourage you more to as aggressively as possible to fund the plans. We do the same thing for the ’49 plan. If that plan still has some actives we’re looking at paying down the unfunded there over nine years rather than the state law requirements and in this case the required contribution is $1.74 million but on a recommended contribution where we accelerate the funding it would be $2.21 million. That’s the funding results for the year. To look at the GASBY results, this is what is reflected in your financial statements and there is one substantial difference between what we do for funding and what we do for GASBY. Going back to that asset smoothing for GASBY purposes, we’re required to reflect the market value. We are not allowed to smooth assets. So you will see a different unfunded liability for GASBY purposes than you would for funding purposes. So for financial statement purposes the unfunded liability is $1.47 million for the ’45 plan and with a funded percentage of 79% which is little lower than we showed in the prior slide because of the difference in the method in which we recognize the assets. And the pension expense that flows through your financial statements is $386,000 and is because GASBY requires recognition of gains and losses much more rapidly than funding rules require. The ’49 plan, same issue. We use the actual market value of assets which results in an unfunded liability of $20.4 million, funded percentage is 76% and a pension expense of $3.7 million so you can see a much different expense that’s required for financial statement purposes compared to funding. For the post-retirement medical plan you have liabilities of $113 million that are recognized on the financial statement with an annual expense of a little over $8 million dollars. What’s left in the report are our certifications of the numbers and where we developed our assumptions. Mr. Hasan: Sir, can you go back to the very first file you showed us? 5 Mr. Karbon: What part? Where we developed mortality – Mr. Hasan: Mortality. Mr. Karbon: Just for governmental employees. Mr. Hasan: My question is it seems there’s three different scales – Mr. Karbon: Yes, you have no teachers in the plan. Mr. Hasan: You had law enforcement and you had average employees. In saying that is it an attempt to charge one more to contributing to it, not even based on their salary to contribute or what’s the point of that being important? Mr. Karbon: This is why we haven’t implemented it yet. We’re still reviewing all this but generally we see 60% general employees, 40% public employees and if that’s the makeup of your group, then that’s how we’ll split up, that’s how we’ll develop the mortality tables so we’re going to look at your population. How many were general employees, how many were public safety and develop our mortality based on that. Mr. Hasan: You’re trying to leverage everything. Mr. Karbon: Yes, we’re just trying to reflect the actual group. Mr. Hasan: Okay. Mr. Karbon: These tables are showing that people are living a little bit longer than they had been previously and we just want to make sure that we’re funding for it accordingly. The whole goal is to reflect reality to the extent we can. Mr. Hasan: Thank you, sir. Mr. Frantom: On the unfunded actuarials, how does that affect what the city’s contribution is? Mr. Karbon: If we look at the ’45 and ’49 plans and compare 18 to 19 and so your unfunded was $645,000 and it went to $801,000 and because of that differential your cost went up by $40,000 in the 1945 plan and that’s really driven by the change in the unfunded. Especially in the ’45 plan because there’s no new accruals in the plan so it’s all about what are the liabilities for the retirees compared to the assets and here it is really the asset underperformance more than a change in liabilities that drove that. Mr. Frantom: Does that mean that the City’s going to contribute more based off of that? 6 Mr. Karbon: The goal has generally been to try to fund towards the recommended and not the required and the recommended went up as well so yes, to the extent that there’s an unfunded liability that goes up, that generally leads to increases in contributions over time. Mr. Frantom: Okay, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor: All right, we’ll receive it as information. Mr. Frantom: So move. It was the consensus of the committee that this item be received as information. 1. Presentation of the second quarter ending June 30, 2019 investment reports for the 1945 and 1949 pension plans by Heather Seigler, Morgan Stanley. Ms. Seigler made a presentation regarding an overview of the investment reports for the 1945 and 1949 pension plans. Mr. Mayor: If there are no questions, we’re prepared to receive this as information. It was the consensus of the committee that this item be received as information. 3. Motion to award RFP 19-003 Investment Management and Trustee Administration Services of the 1945/1949 Pension Plan to Morgan Stanley as recommended by the Selection Committee. Mr. Schroer: Just a brief recap. The RFP was put out as Investment Manager for the 45 and the 49 plan. Both plans are closed. The retirement overview just as a brief investment strategy that is currently being held as an active investment strategy. The actuarial assumptions are 2% inflation rate, salaries will increase on an average of 3% per year and the investment rate of return is 7.25%. There are four members of the Evaluation Committee, two from Finance, one from the Administrator’s Office and one from the Utilities Finance Department. We received three bids. The two highest scored bidders were selected for presentation. After the presentations, the Selection Committee scored Morgan Stanley the higher of the two firms. This is a copy of the score sheet for the committee. It is the Evaluation Committee’s recommendation that Morgan Stanley be awarded this bid. I’ll take any questions that you may have. Mr. Frantom: Can you go back one screen and explain to me what percentage of the investment performance, I mean obviously we’ve been talking about actuaries and thing and that has got to have the single most weight, what percentage of that in the scoring because I can’t really read it, was the deciding factor in how it was determined and where is that on the screen, I guess, what number? Mr. Schroer: I think (inaudible) we really looked at past performance because it is past performance and you do look at, you want to look at your past performance to make sure that there’s no consistent outliars, if it’s gone up 30% and this person has lost 30% overall for the last 7 three years so we looked at the evaluation of how the returns did based on their information presented. Mr. Frantom: But their investment performance, are you saying that doesn’t matter how you would determine – Mr. Schroer: No, sir, I’m not saying it doesn’t matter. What I’m saying is you want to look at the trends. If we were to look at this and say over the last five years the investments, the investment portfolio of this firm lost 5% per year while the market was making 20% per year, you would look at that and say maybe we don’t want to look at that. We don’t want to include them in the firm. So that would be in the overall evaluation pro formas of the firm. That’s where you look at that. If there were within the parameters, the norms of the market, the evaluator would say they would be a good firm, they’d be a competent firm to work with. Mr. Frantom: Okay. Last time it was discussed a passive versus an aggressive approach and the City believes in an active approach as opposed to a passive approach. Mr. Schroer: That’s correct. That is approach that the City has taken. Mr. Frantom: Why would the City want to be in an active approach when we’ve put in $1.7 average, almost over $15 million in the past ten plus years into the contribution plan out of the General Fund when the previous years before that we were breaking even or not putting any money hardly at all? Why would we want to continue down that road to put that kind of money into the plan, in the ’49 plan especially? Mr. Schroer: It’s a combination of several factors. It’s not just the performance of the stocks. You have to look at what your level of benefits are, how many participants are in the plan, how many retirees are in the plan. The stock market has gone up tremendously in the last ten, twelve years so you have to look at that and evaluate that. And going back to 15 years ago what were the benefit levels, how many people were participating. In 1998 we had a defined contribution plan so there was no pension cost at that point in time aside from an employer match. This takes as Bill was saying this takes into account how you look at the entire program. Their job is at the end of the day if, what would it take for the City to have funded a pension plan if we stopped based on all the actuarial studies, how much would we have to have in place for the ’45 or the ’49 plan to continue paying out the benefits for the expected life of the participants? Mr. Frantom: Why is the City’s stance to put in recommended versus required when we’re having to put so much into the employee contribution? I’m trying to understand what’s the rationale behind that. Mr. Schroer: We felt that the active management plan was the best course going forward. Either plan you’re going to have to put money in in our opinion. That’s what we’ve discussed is if you look back, if you look at this consistently, employers are having to put in contributions to the employer plan. In the previous slide we had we looked at this. You would have had to have a return of investment annually a little over 9% per year forever not to have employer contributions, excuse me. 8 Mr. Frantom: So does that mean you’re saying that from this point forward we’re going to have to put things into the General Fund out of, into this plan moving forward regardless of who’s the company? Is that what you’re saying? Mr. Schroer: I would believe so, yes, sir. That’s based on historical trends and information I’m seeing. Pension costs are going to go up. Our employees are getting older. We have more employees that are becoming eligible to retire so therefore, our pension costs forward will be paying out for pensions is continuing to grow. Mr. Frantom: And my final thought, Mr. Mayor, and I’ll give it back to you. It’s just that it’s just a little bit concerning to me that when you look at the performance over the years and we’re not from, and I saw the five members I think of the team that put this together, I don’t think there’s as great a weight on that as it should be and you know to see what’s happened in the plan over the last 15 years is concerning. It’s taxpayers’ money and so I’m just not there to move forward today and I guess I would ask Donna to answer this question. If we were to try to look at starting the process over, how does that affect things if we didn’t move forward? Ms. Williams: You would issue a new RFP. Mr. Frantom: How does that affect, do things keep moving, I mean, does – Ms. Williams: The administration, the investment of the plans would stay where they are pending the result of that new RFP going out and the governing body making a decision as to what they wanted to do at that point. Mr. Mayor: I share the Mayor Pro Tem’s sentiment and I’m going to entertain a motion. Mr. Hasan: Mr. Mayor, can I – Mr. Mayor: All right. Mr. Hasan: I’m not on the committee, once again, but I know Procurement is not here so what is your motion going to be? I guess you don’t know at this point but based on what the Mayor Pro Tem said about going out, and I heard it seems to be around, he figures that we’re not getting an adequate return or the City is heavily invested in it or what have you as opposed to being some time ago so is that your position that you feel we need to do that different or do something different in terms of doing a new RFP? Is that what you’re trying to get done here? Mr. Mayor: I think there is a variety of things that are – Mr. Hasan: So wouldn’t the full Commission weigh in on that and not just this committee if that’s where you’re headed with this? Mr. Mayor: It absolutely would. 9 Mr. Hasan: So is it going to come to the Commission to make the final decision? Mr. Mayor: It absolutely would. Mr. Hasan: Will that be today? Mr. Mayor: No. Mr. Hasan: When will that be? Mr. Mayor: Two weeks from now. Mr. Hasan: Two weeks from now? Okay, all right then. Mr. Frantom: Are you requesting that we move it forward without a recommendation? Mr. Hasan: No, I’m not requesting. I was just wondering based on your questions and you were asking about issuing another RFP and if you want to do that, that’s fine if that’s your intent to try to – Mr. Frantom: I think for me, I mean this is me speaking like I just can’t move forward with this. I’m not saying we just start a new RFP. I think we have to look at it and make sure we’re doing everything that we need to be doing. If there’s practices that we might need to add to it before we just go and do the new RFP is the way I feel because I just don’t feel good where I sit right here. Mr. Hasan: We’re just trying to get some clarity on it. But as ultimate is your objective to get a new RFP or are you trying to get some clarity on this because – Mr. Frantom: No, I think we’re going to have to start over. Mr. Hasan: So that’s your objective. Mr. Frantom: Yeah. Mr. Hasan: I just wanted to know what your objectives are. Mr. Mayor: Okay, all right I’ll entertain that. I think given our posture and that there is more discussion that needs to happen on this, again, we know that this could, Madam Clerk, we deferred this from the May 21 meeting? The Clerk: Yes, sir. Mr. Mayor: It may be appropriate for us to defer this again. We certainly could push it to the full Commission with no recommendation but given what I think I know and what I think I’m hearing, either of those are options that are both reasonable. 10 Mr. Hasan: I would push it back to full Commission because it would be the second time in coming before this committee here. You haven’t made a decision so you let the Commission weigh in on it at this point. The Clerk: If they choose to, they can defer it back to the Pension Committee. th Mr. Mayor: They sure can. All right, the Chair recognizes the commissioner from the 4. th Mr. Sias: Thank you, sir. I have a question for my colleague if it’s okay, from the 7. Commissioner, in listening to your comments, is it the RFP, will the RFP process, is the RFP process is the part that’s requiring the active or passive thing or is that just a process that’s not necessarily involved in the RFP but is a partial that this agency has taken? Mr. Frantom: I think it’s definitely involved in the RFP because they basically went with the firm that had more in line with what the City wanted to do and I think that’s where there needs to be some of that discussion. Is that really where the City needs to go when we’re putting that kind of contribution into the plan for the past ten plus years. Mr. Sias: So it’s not really the RFP process. It’s what you consider the objectives of the City. Mr. Mayor: Let me respond to that. It absolutely is. It includes that as well. It absolutely includes that as well. I think this is a very necessary debate. One that needs to be had today and two weeks from now and we can certainly do that with the full Commission. Mr. Frantom: Make a motion to move it to the full Commission in two weeks. Mr. Mayor: With no recommendation. Mr. Frantom: Yeah, with no recommendation. Mr. Sims: Second. Mr. Schroer: Mr. Mayor, if I could, if it does go back to a new RFP the question I would have is pointing that out is there going to be a change, does the body want a change in the management style from passive or active or do you want to see an RFP asking for both management styles? Mr. Mayor: I think we’ll ask for that. We’re going to have a debate two weeks from now. We’ll lay all of that out. Yeah, we’ll lay all of that out. I think that’s important. Thanks so much for that, Tim. All right, our motion before us is to move forward with no recommendation to the full Commission for additional debate. All those in favor, show of hands. The Clerk: Commissioner Fennoy, are you going to vote with this or – 11 Mr. Fennoy: (inaudible) The Clerk: The motion is to refer this RFP award to the full Commission on September rd 3 with no recommendation. Mr. Fennoy, Mr. Sims, Mr. Frantom and the Mayor vote Yes. Ms. Williams abstains. Motion carries 4-1. ADJOURNMENT: There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned. Lena J. Bonner Clerk of Commission 12