(See also Plan Definitions - OPEB mode and Plan Definitions - German mode.)

Benefits for active participants are determined by the Plan Definition. The Plan Definition is a collection of individual benefits payable under various contingencies plus any applicable employee contributions.

Five types of benefits may be included in a plan. Four are benefits payable from the decrements: retirement, termination, death and disability. The fifth benefit is “in-service”, that is, benefits payable to a plan member while in active status.

The number of benefits (Benefit Definitions) of each type that may be included in a plan (Plan Definition) is unlimited. Each plan must include at least one retirement benefit, and if vested liabilities are to be calculated then the plan should include at least one vested termination benefit. In addition, during execution of a Valuation or Core Projection, ProVal will warn you about each decrement to which the active population is subject that does not lead to a benefit. For example, if you include an active mortality table in the valuation assumptions but do not have a death benefit included in your plan, ProVal will point this out at execution.

If you have several benefits listed as initiated by the same contingency, ProVal will decide, based upon a few parameters, which benefit is paid:

• The eligibility requirements for these benefits may or may not overlap. If an individual is concurrently eligible for two benefits, then both may be paid. For example, the eligibility requirement for the standard retirement benefit may be age 55, while a (U.S.) Social Security supplement has eligibility requirements from age 55 to 62. An individual retiring between 55 and 62 gets both benefits, while an individual retiring after 62 gets only the standard benefit.

• Post-decrement probabilities may be associated with one or more of the benefits. Suppose that two retirement benefits are included in the plan, one with a lump sum payment form and the other with a life annuity payment form. If post-decrement probabilities of 70% and 30%, respectively, are associated with these benefits, then an individual retiring from service would have a 70% chance of getting a lump sum and a 30% chance of getting an annuity. Although having post-decrement probabilities add to 1 is common, it is not required. Also see Benefit Definitions - Pension Modes for information about the parameter used to apply these probabilities.

The eligibility requirements for the retirement benefits included in the plan have additional significance in that they affect the manner in which the decrement tables identified in your valuation assumptions are used. Before earliest retirement eligibility, an active participant will be subjected to the possibility of termination but not retirement, even if the retirement table has non-zero values. After earliest retirement eligibility, the situation reverses: the termination decrement “turns off” and the retirement rates begin to apply. Note that if there are groups of plan participants with different conditions for early retirement eligibility, it is usually necessary to define, and run them through, separate Benefit Definitions (with the groups selected by means of a Selection Expression for eligibility), so that termination rates are not turned off for all groups of participants at the earliest retirement eligibility that applies to any of the groups.

Plan Name is a text field for the name of the plan for which benefits are defined.

Benefit Definitions lists all of the Benefit Definitions that have already been identified as a part of this Plan Definition. In the pension modes, The Type column shows the three-letter prefix indicating the contingency under which that benefit is paid: ret, trm, dth, dis or InS (for  benefit payments to a plan member while in active status).  The Modified column shows the date of the most recent modification to the library entry. To edit an existing Benefit Definition or to omit it from the Plan Definition, double-click the library entry or select the entry and click the Edit button. To create a new Benefit Definition, click the New button. To add or omit several Benefit Definitions at a time, click the Add/Omit button, which leads you to a list of Benefit Definitions unhidden in the current Project. Check off any Benefit Definitions to include in the plan and uncheck any Benefit Definitions you wish to omit from the plan. See Benefit Definitions – Pension Modes for more information.

Employee Contributions lists all of the Contribution Definitions library entries that have already been identified as employee contributions for this Plan Definition.  To edit an existing employee contribution, highlight the name of the Contribution Definition and click the Edit Cont button. To create a new employee contribution, click the New Cont button. To add or omit existing employee contribution, click the Add/Omit button, which leads you to a list of Contribution Definitions unhidden in the current project. Check off any Contribution Definitions to include in the plan as an employee contribution and uncheck any Contribution Definitions you wish to omit from the plan. See Contribution Definitions for more information.

Select a topic to edit contains the Plan Attributes and Contribution Policy Data topics and, in universal mode, the (Belgium) Insurance Reserves topics, Employee Contracts and Employer Contracts, which pertain to pension plans of Belgium. Click the topic name to access its parameters. The Plan Attributes parameters pertain to rounding of (U.S.) social security wage bases and covered compensation, the averaging period to be used in a final average salary calculation and the frequency and timing of benefit payments within a payment year. See Plan Attributes - pension modes for details.