The Custom Operators command allows you to define your own accrual basis operators. These Custom Operators may be defined as any one of seven basic types:

• Salary (e.g., #SALARY),

• Final Average Salary (e.g., n #FAS m),

• Average Wage Base (e.g., #AVGWB n),

• U.S. Social Security Covered Compensation (e.g., #CVCP),

• U.S. Social Security Primary Insurance Amount (e.g., #PIA) 

• Canadian Maximum Pension  (e.g., a CANMAX b) or

• German State Pension (e.g., #SVR 1 or #SVR 2).

The operators listed in parentheses above are ProVal’s standard operators for these values. The Custom Operators feature allows you to create new operators that act in a similar fashion. For example, the standard #FAS operator averages consecutive high salaries. You can create a custom operator, perhaps #NONCONSECFAS, to average non-consecutive high salaries.

The customizing options for each type of operator initially are set to match the standard operators, with the exception of the Average Wage Base operator, which varies its defaults based on the current computational mode.

Name is a short description that will be used to reference the Custom Operator in an Accrual Basis Expression. The name must start with the “#” symbol (if you forget to include it, ProVal will add it automatically).  The Canadian Maximum Pension custom operators are also permitted to be directly referenced in the formula of a Benefit Definition.

Description may be any descriptive phrase, including spaces.

Type of operator selects the type of operator you wish to create. When you have selected a type, the topic (category of information) containing the applicable parameters appears (two topics for the U.S. PIA Custom Operator).

Select a topic to edit contains the topic(s) that must be completed for the selected Custom Operator. The topics are:

Salary of decrement year (e.g., #SALARY):	Salary Parameters
Final Average Salary (e.g., n #FAS m):	Final Average Salary Parameters
Average Wage Base (e.g., #AVGWB n):	Average Wage Base Parameters
U.S. Covered Compensation (e.g., #CVCP):	U.S. Covered Compensation Parameters
U. S. Social Security Primary Insurance Amount (e.g., #PIA):	Salaries and Computation Age & Law Year
Canadian Maximum Pension (e.g., a #CANMAX b):	Service Parameters
German State Pension (e.g., #SVR 1 or #SVR 2):	German State Pension Parameters