Wednesday, April 25, 2012

How Strong Is The Motion Picture Industry Pension Plan?

Completing our trifecta regarding TAG pension and health plans ...

Animation Guild veterans often ask us:
"So ... Will I ever get a pension? Will the pension plan even be around when I'm ready to hang it up? ...

For the fretful, here are some answers, courtesy of the Motion Picture Industry Pension Plan.
The Plan must report how well it is funded by using a measure called the "funded percentage. This percentage is determined by dividing the Plan's assets by its liabilities. ... [T]he higher the percentage, the better funded the plan.

Funded percentage (2011) -- 83.2%

Value of assets -- $3,088,722,000

Value of liabilities -- $3,714,500,000

Total Participants -- 71,742

Plan Investments

Cash - 2%

Government bonds -- 17%

Corporate bonds -- 14%

Equities -- 17%

Real estate -- 6%

Interest bearing accounts -- 42%

Other -- 2%

What I've done here is truncate a longer document. (No point in having eyes glaze over.)

It's important to note that federal law requires retirement plans to be above 80% for the funding of liabilities to be in what's called "the green zone." The MPIPP has been in that zone for the past two years. (There are other, less desirable zones in the federal color chart. These usually spell T.R.O.U.B.L.E.)

1 comments:

Jim Mortensen said...

Is there any way at all to get the pension plan money rolled into a 401k or IRA before retirement?

Not that I don't trust the managers of the plan or the strength of the Industry as a whole... But I know too many people who had supposedly infallible Defined Benefit plans pulled out from under them come retirement.

CALPERS, for instance.

I contribute 15% to my 401k, partly because I'm not certain that the pension plan will still be around in 30-40 years.

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