Under the Preservation of Access to Care for Medicare Beneficiaries and Pension Relief Act of 2010 (the Act), employers with underfunded DB plans may elect to amortize funding shortfalls for any two plan years between 2008 and 2011 either over a 15-year period or by making interest-only payments for two years followed by seven years of amortization. Generally, DB sponsors are required to amortize shortfalls over seven years.

"The federal government has given employers the much-needed and welcome funding relief they were seeking," said Mark Warshawsky, director of retirement research at Towers Watson. "Despite some improvement in the overall health of pension plans since the depths of the financial crisis, employers had been bracing for sharp increases in their DB funding obligations. Now, with the new law, employers can breathe a collective, albeit temporary, sigh of relief."

The Towers Watson analysis projected funded status and minimum required contributions for single-employer DB plans under three scenarios for the five plan years from 2009 through 2013: the pre-Act provisions and the two funding options under the new law. It did not consider the impact of the law's so-called cash-flow rules, which require extra pension contributions if executive compensation or dividend payments are too large, and could cause some employers to forgo the relief offered. The two funding options were tested for all potential two years of relief over the 2009 to 2011 period.

The analysis found that, under the pre-Act provisions, the minimum required contributions in aggregate would be $78.4 billion for plan year 2010, and would escalate to $131 billion for 2011 and approximately $159 billion for both 2012 and 2013.

Under the new law, however, required contributions would be reduced between $19 billion and $63 billion, depending on which of the two provisions and which plan years employers choose. The 15-year amortization for 2010 and 2011 funding shortfalls offers employers the maximum aggregate funding relief for employers over the 2009 through 2013 projection period; the seven-plus-two-year option for 2009 and 2010 funding shortfalls provides the least amount of relief. The analysis noted that for employers with immediate cash-flow concerns, the seven-plus-two-year option for 2010 and 2011 may be the better choice to concentrate the relief, while the 15-year amortization rule spreads the relief more evenly over a longer period.

In a separate survey earlier this month of 137 Towers Watson consultants on behalf of 367 employers, only one-quarter (25 percent) of plans are likely to elect the relief. Many employers have concerns about the application of the cash-flow rule and uncertainties around details of the new law; others are pursuing aggressive funding policies, have good funded positions or otherwise do not need relief. For those likely to elect the relief, most employers intend to reflect it for plan years 2010 and 2011 and use the 15-year amortization option.

More information on the analysis can be found at: http://www.towerswatson.com/fundingrelief.