More large employers turning to pension de-risking

The entrance sign to Kimberly-Clark Corporation world headquarters campus in Irving, Texas./ AP

Once a rarity, employer efforts to “de-risk” their pension plans are moving into a mainstream corporate benefits approach.

Less than three years ago, General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co. captured national attention when the big automakers disclosed their trailblazing pension de-risking approaches.

But now, pension de-risking announcements are frequently being made. This week, for example, in the latest corporate move to reduce pension plan risks, Dallas-based paper goods manufacturer Kimberly-Clark Corp. said it will transfer about $2.5 billion in pension plan obligations to Prudential Insurance Co. of America and Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. through the purchase of group annuities.

“The group annuity contracts from Prudential and MassMutual, both highly-rated insurance companies and experts in this field, provide excellent benefit security for our retirees, while further reducing noncore financial risk for Kimberly-Clark,” Mark Buthman, Kimberly-Clark's chief financial officer, said in a statement.

Kimberly-Clark’s announcement follows similar disclosures over the last few months by such large and well-known employers as Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Motorola Solutions Inc., NCR Corp. and The Timken Co., who also have made big annuity purchases from insurers.

Other employers, like agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland Co., have taken a different de-risking approach by giving certain plan participants the option to convert their annuities into cash lump-sum benefits.

Both approaches are intended to reduce the size of employers’ pension plans. With that reduction comes less of an impact from interest rate fluctuations and investment results on employer contributions to their pension plans.

In addition, with smaller pension plans, employers can reduce certain fixed costs, such as the payment of sharply rising premiums to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.

And more employers are expected to adopt one or both de-risking approaches, experts say.

“While it is difficult to predict activity in any given year, we would expect the transactions over the past few years to be the continuation of a trend rather than a temporary blip,” said Jason Richards, a senior retirement risk management consultant at Towers Watson & Co. in St. Louis.