When employers design a retirement plan, they typically require that four categories of criteria be satisfied. The extent to which an employer's current plan meets these objectives dictates whether it might be time to consider a new more modern plan design:

1. Improve retirement outcomes

A successful pension plan needs to invest and accumulate assets effectively during working years, and then convert them efficiently into guaranteed lifetime income. Traditional defined benefit (DB) plans and cash balance (CB) plans lend themselves to overly conservative investment strategies, increasing their cost, while defined contribution (DC) plans are ineffective at providing lifetime income, relying either on expensive insured annuities or on overpriced and complicated income products. 

Modern plan designs invest assets competitively to maximize the growth of assets while balancing risk, and then convert them into lifetime retirement income inside the pension plan, taking advantage of longevity risk pooling opportunities in the plan, and avoiding underwriting and other external plan expenses and overhead.