The Benefit Payments, Assets, & Expenses dialog box contains parameters that provide information necessary to analyze the gain or loss due to cash flow over the period (plan contributions and investment income less benefit payments and expenses paid from plan funds) that is other than expected.

Entering asset information will not only provide you with the asset gain/loss (an easy hand calculation) but will also provide a reconciliation of the unfunded accrued liability for immediate gain recognition cost methods or a reconciliation of the present value of future normal cost for spread gain recognition cost methods. This reconciliation is a useful tool for checking the reasonableness of the total gain or loss.

Entering actual benefit payment information, or actual expenses paid from plan funds, will allow ProVal to compare actual to expected benefit payments, or actual to expected expenses, and thus analyze this source of gain or loss. Entering actual benefit payments and/or expenses is useful even if you don’t enter assets, because benefits payments and assumed expenses affect the liability side of the equation.

Regardless of whether you wish to see analysis of the asset and/or expense gain / (loss), you should select one of the following options for specifying actual Benefit payments, with interest to end of period:

• End of period database field: If you provide, in a database field for each end-of-period database record, the sum of the benefit payments the participant received during the period, choose the End of period database field option and select the field that will contain the end-of-period value of benefit payments, accumulated with interest to the end of the period. Keep in mind that all records appearing on the end-of-period database with a participating status (i.e., active, retired, terminated vested, disabled, or survivor) at either the beginning of the period or the end of the period will contribute to the sum. Missing values will be treated as zeroes.​

• Total: To provide instead the total value of benefits paid during the period for all plan participants, select the Total option and enter, in the text box, the total amount of plan benefit payments, accumulated with interest to the end of the period.​

• ​​Expected benefit payments, using valuation assumptions: Select this option to set actual benefit payments received during the period using valuation assumptions. This option will produce expected benefit payments in the same manner that expected benefit payments are produced for the beginning-of period Valuation(s), with interest adjustments for timing to the end of period. Note that expected benefit payments for Valuation purposes do not reflect interest, whereas interest is reflected for gain / (loss) purposes. For example, if your valuation benefit is 1000 payable, your valuation expected benefit payments payable monthly would be 1000 * (13/24 + 11/24 * px). For gain / (loss) purposes, this same expected benefit payment, adjusted for interest, would be 1000 * (13/24 + 11/24 * v * px) * (1+i).

• Expected benefit payments, given end of period status: Select this option to set actual benefit payments received during the period equal to its calculation of expected benefit payments, given each record's end of period status. For example, if a member with an active beginning-of-period status has a retired status at the end of the period, the actual benefit payments received during the period are determined based upon the retirement benefit calculated in the beginning-of-period Valuation(s). ProVal will further adjust expected benefit payments to equal the total liability settled for any participants who have non-participating or missing end-of-period statuses and are assumed cashed out (see Non-Participating Statuses for more information).

To compute the asset gain / (loss) in addition to the liability gain / (loss), check the box Calculate asset gain/loss. If you choose to compute the asset gain / (loss), you may also check the box to Calculate the expense gain/(loss). If calculating the asset (and expense) gain/loss, complete the following parameters:

• Assets 
  • Beginning of period 
  • End of period 

• Expenses
  • Expected, beginning of period, only required if calculating expense gain/loss 
  • Actual, with interest to end of period

• Contributions (employer + employee)
  • Actual, with interest to end of period