U.S. company pensions less solvent in 2014: UBS

'Dropping perilously close to 80 per cent level should sound alarm'

NEW YORK (Reuters) — U.S. corporate pension funds turned less solvent in 2014 versus 2013, approaching risky levels based on regulations, as their liabilities ballooned by more than $180 billion (all dollars US), according to UBS analysts.

The solvency ratio of retirement schemes among Russell 1000 companies fell to 81 per cent last year from 87 per cent in 2013. Unfunded liabilities of these pensions grew to $426 billion or about 2.5 per cent of nominal gross domestic product, they said.

"Consequently, dropping so perilously close to the 80 per cent level should sound an alarm for the entire corporate pension space," UBS analysts Boris Rjavinskiand Matthias Rusinski wrote in a May 27 research report released on Thursday.

The drop in solvency occurred even as the Russell 1000 companies put $55 billion into their pensions in 2014, compared with $60 billion in 2013, they said.

"Poorly" funded plans outnumbered "well-funded" ones by a ratio of nearly four to one.

Poorly funded pensions are those with solvency ratio of less than 80 per cent, according to U.S. regulations, while well-funded pensions have solvency ratio above 95 per cent.

Pension funds among aerospace, airlines and auto makers are among those most underfunded, the analysts said.

A potential result of the growing gap between pension assets and liabilities is company demand for long-dated Treasury and corporate bonds so pensions could meet their obligation on future payouts to retired workers, Rjavinski and Rusinski said.

They estimated U.S. private pension demand could hold down long-term U.S. bond yields by 30 to 40 basis points.

Latest stories