Milliman, Inc., consulting and actuarial firm, releases the latest update to the Milliman 100 Pension Funding Index. In February, pensions lost another $54 billion in assets.
These losses were offset by liability decreases of roughly $21 billion, resulting in a net loss of $33 billion in funding status for the month. In the last year alone, the funding ratio for these pensions has fallen from 99.6% to 71.7%.
Funding status has fallen by $337 billion in the last 12 months thanks in large part to a -26% asset return. As of the end of February, the total asset value for these pensions stood at $869 billion.
“January was a terrible month for asset values, and February was worse,” says John Ehrhardt, co-author of the Milliman 100 Pension Funding Index. “We’re not even through the first quarter yet and already funding status had declined from 77.2% to 71.7%, and that’s with asset values being offset by changes in discount rates.”
L.D.