HELP! CFA LEVEL 2 problem? liability, expected, problem, return, actual

spiritall

schweser pension plan 这部分写明 expected return on plan assets 提高 会使Net pension asset提高或Net pension liability降低，从而改善企业的financial statement ,leverage ratio.

可是Funded status都于expected return on plan assets 无关（只与actual return on asset有关），

Funded status>>

+ Unrecognized actuarial losses or>>

- Unrecognized actuarial gains>>

+ Unrecognized prior service cost>>

+ Unrecognized prior transition obligation or>>

- Unrecognized prior transition asset

+ Amortization of actuarial gains or losses and plan amendments

= Net pension asset (liability)

怎么net pension asset(liability)会与这个精算rate 撤上关系呢？

望高手指点！

jgao2003

The confusion of Pension Accounting is caused mainly by the fact that FASB adopt a compromising approach when draft the Accounting Standards.

Remember, PBO is a value calculated by actury (精算师).It is an estimate. So the fund status is related to the assumptions used by actury and periodically, the actury will make adjustment on their assumptions, which may result in gain or loss on the PBO.

However, the tricky thing is that when you make entries on the accounting books, you will not book the actural acturial gain/loss adjusment , you will amortize the gain/loss. The reason behind such accounting treatment is that the pension cost is "smoothed". Otherwise, the constant acturial gain/loss may fluctuate quite a lot and most businesses will not accept such accounting method because their earnings may also fluctuate quite a lot.

So FASB adopt the method mentioned above, and require that the business has to disclose the reconciliation from the fund status to the amount on the accounting book.

I know it is not a simple answer that you will grasp immediately, however, if you think it through, it will make more sense to you.

Same kind of logic apply to the treatments on expected/actural return.