This topic of the Census Specifications command contains the parameters that tell ProVal how to treat each participant with respect to future service and “decrements”, including mortality. Except in the German pension mode, for plan participants who are in active status, there are four possible contingencies that are initiated by decrementing from active status (which therefore cause a status change): retirement, termination, death and disability.

After a decrement from active status has occurred, the participant is exposed only to the mortality decrement (thus all records are always subject to the mortality decrement, regardless of the record’s ProVal status). In the German pension mode, active participants who terminate, along with participants who are currently in terminated vested status, are subject to the death, disability and retirement decrements. All records are always subject to the mortality decrement, regardless of the record’s ProVal status.

Th ProVal status codes indicating how to treat plan participants are:

• Active participants are considered to be in active service and are subjected to all decrements: retirement, termination, death and disability.

• The Retired, Vested (not available in the German pension mode), Disabled and Survivor categories are considered inactive and, in all modes, these records are subject only to the mortality decrement and, for many types of liabilities, a different mortality table may be specified for each category. Note for PPA at-risk liabilities for terminated vested participants in the U.S. qualified mode: if you wish ProVal to calculate these liabilities “automatically” under at-risk rules, use the “hybrid” status discussed below instead of the Vested status. Alternatively, you may use the Vested status and “manually” reflect at-risk rules (i.e., in the parameterization of Inactive Benefits) by including in the Valuation Set (or Deterministic or Stochastic Forecast) an override Valuation (or Core Projection) to calculate PPA at-risk liabilities.

• Terminated Vested participants (available only in German mode) are subject to death, disability and retirement decrements. Only participants in this category will be affected by the #NormToNRB operator.

• There is a “hybrid” category, available in pension modes other than German and U.K., for terminated vested participants for whom access is needed to ProVal libraries that are not available to the inactive statuses, such as retirement rate reference tables and lump sum factor Benefit Formula Components. Note that in the U.S. qualified mode, access to retirement rates is needed to value PPA at-risk liabilities in the same Valuation (or Core Projection) as not-at-risk liabilities, and this access is provided by use of hybrid status (instead of the Vested status, discussed above). This ProVal status, Vested valued through active, might also be useful for valuing participants who are no longer accruing benefits but whose employment has not terminated (thus they may still be accruing service), such as employees who have transferred out of the division that provides the benefits being valued and who are now working at a different division within the company. Vested valued through active participants are valued using active benefits and assumptions and will be subject to the active decrements retirement and death only; termination and disability rates will be coerced to 0 (if these decrement rates are not already set to zero). For other considerations related to the “Vested valued through active” status code, please see the Technical Reference article entitled Vested inactives valued as active.

• Non-participating records are excluded from all calculations. This category may be appropriate when some records (for example, inactives who received, or are anticipated to receive, lump sum payouts) are maintained for data reconciliation purposes but have no associated liability. This status is also useful when a database is used for more than one plan valuation and you wish to exclude some records from processing in some valuations but include them in others.

Note that the status code mapping applies on the Valuation Date (as defined in the Valuation or Core Projection referencing this set of Census Specifications). Active participants eventually will decrement and become inactive, although the record’s status code still is mapped to the ProVal “Active” status.  Similarly, vested participants with a deferred benefit eventually should commence receipt but the record's status code will not be remapped, to a retired status, once benefit payments start. 

For each record in a referenced database, Specify how to determine participant status:

• Select Single status to map all records to just one status. This option should be used only when the status code field of all database records is to be mapped to only one of the ProVal statuses listed above (for example, only active employees or only one of the two terminated vested statuses). You may specify any of ProVal’s status categories except “Non-participating”.

• Select Status field to indicate that each participant’s status, as of the Valuation Date, is identified by the contents of the coded database field selected here. Once you select the field, a grid becomes accessible in which you specify, for each Field Label associated with your field in the Data Dictionary (listed here), the corresponding ProVal Status code to use when this label is encountered. Each possible code of your status field thus will be mapped to a ProVal status code, and mapping under this option can include the Non-participating ProVal Status.

The mapping of a status field to ProVal status codes need not be one-to-one. Suppose that you wish to have distinct codes, and labels, for three different types of employees considered active (e.g., “actively at work”, “leave of absence”, “transferred out”). All three of these codes/labels could be assigned to the ProVal status “Active”.

Note that if you have only actives in your database and wish to leave the Inactive Data topic blank, you must map all records to “Active”. Otherwise, the (active) records of your database must contain the inactive data fields (even if blank) of the Inactive Data topic. (See Inactive Data - Pension Modes or Inactive Data - OPEB Mode for a list of the required data fields.) Similarly, if you have, for example, only records mapped to the “Vested” status in your database and wish to leave the Active Data topic blank, you must map all records to “Vested”.