Edward H Friend, PresidentEdward H Friend, PresidentYears of Experience: 40
Education
• Graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with a major in Mathematics
• Elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi, the honorary scientific society
Professional Certification and Accreditation:
• Fellow, Society of Actuaries
• Fellow, Conference of Actuaries in Public Practice
• Member, American Academy of Actuaries
• Enrolled Actuary under ERISA, holding Enrollment Number 14
• Associate, Institute of Actuaries in Great Britain
• Has served as: President, Conference of Actuaries in Public Practice; Vice-President, American Academy of Actuaries; Member, Board of Governors of the Society of Actuaries; and contributing author/founding member, International Association of Consulting Actuaries
Experience:
• Mr. Friend has served as lead actuary to hundreds of public agencies and public retirement systems of all sizes. A sample of his experience includes:
Major States
• New York Pension Commission (The Kinzel Commission) - Redesign and implementation of the New York State and New York City pension plans for new employees. The redesign affected the benefits paid to over 100,000 new employees.
• California Public Employee Retirement System - Served as Principal Actuary and audit actuary
• Florida Retirement System - Performed substantive examination of the conceptual framework of the system and recommendations for constructive change
• Georgia Employees Retirement System - Performed a comprehensive audit review
• Massachusetts Teachers’ Retirement System - Performed cost appraisal and redesigned the System for new employees.
Major Cities
• New York City - see above
• Orlando - Actuarial services to the General, Police and Fire Pension Funds
• Philadelphia - Actuarial valuation and reorganization of the City of Philadelphia Pension Plan
• Tampa - Actuarial services to the Fire and Police Pension System
• Miami - Actuarial valuation and review of all City of Miami pension plans.
Other Government Agencies
• Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission - All general actuarial consulting service
• Alameda Contra-Costa County Transit District - Actuarial valuations, experience studies and educational services
• Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation - Design of initial analytic procedure for the pricing of benefit obligations flowing from inadequately financed pension systems of bankrupt companies.
• Northern Mariana Islands - Services as actuary for the NMI retirement system.
• U.S. Small Business Administration - The pricing of a Lease Guarantee Program to determine premium payable by small companies to ensure their leases so that landlords would provide rental space in prime locations to new and high risk enterprises.
Speaking and Publications:
· Mr. Friend has served as a speaker before such organizations as the National Association of State Retirement Administrators, the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems, the Government Finance Officers Association, the Florida League of Cities, and many similar organizations.
· Founded the Pension Commission Clearinghouse, a public sector servicing entity which produced a periodic summary and analysis of what is happening, legislatively, in public sector employee benefits.
· Organized and chaired fifteen national conferences, attracting prominent speakers and attendees from all over the nation, including state legislators. Conferees addressed public pension and health care issues of the day. Conference themes included “Public Pensions in an Era of Fiscal Distress” and “Public Retiree Health Care and COLA Issues.”
· For the 100th anniversary of the actuarial profession he authored a highly regarded treatise entitled “Weaving Solutions to National Problems on an Actuarial Loom.”
· Contributing author to the 19th International Congress of Actuaries in Denmark, and has prepared extensive Society of Actuaries sponsored student study material on the subject of pension planning.
Authored “A 1972 Critique on Funding Media for Pension Plans”
Authored “Coordination of Survivor Benefits Between Private Pension/Insurance Plans and Social Security”
Published “Hidden Bombshells in Cost-of-Living Adjusted Pension Benefits and Post-Retirement Health & Welfare Benefits”
Published “The Funding of Collectively Bargained Pension Plans Under the Provisions of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974”.
Authored articles entitled “Post-Retirement CPI Indexing of Pension Benefits” and “Public Employee Design, Redesign, and Financing in a Changing Environment”.
In co-sponsorship with the International City Management Association and the Labor Management Relations Service, Edward H. Friend & Company initiated, under the guidance of Mr. Friend, a biennial national survey of employee benefits for full-time personnel of U.S. municipalities involving more than half of the nation’s municipalities with populations over 10,000.
Other:
In 1996, after two years of experimentation, Ed Friend spearheaded the development of a process which finds the optimum asset allocation for any public sector pension system. The process uses patented software, with the nickname “CASSY”.
In an early publication of the EFI FORECAST newsletter (Winter, 1995-1996 edition) it was announced that each plan with its own particular funded status, contribution stream and demographic payout pattern has an optimum major-class asset allocation leading to the best plan cost/risk combination. With Board of Trustee input, CASSY reveals that asset allocation.
In its writings, Ed Friend states that the CASSY system is “plan specific” [is structured to enable tailoring to any particular plan’s benefits structure, membership demographics and financing costs]¼and that the CASSY system is also Board specific [is responsive to a Board identified performance index which profiles the Board’s select risk avoidance objectives and sought-after targeted objectives, each with an associated weight].
Thus, using this U.S. Patented software, the Board of Trustees of any pension system is able to optimize its asset allocation based upon a new and sensible definition of risks¼the chance of unfavorable outcomes a Board would like to avoid.
Unfavorable outcomes (i.e., risks to be avoided), which may be identified in the performance index include the risk of:
• Costs as a percentage of payroll arising above a particular level
• Cost change as a percentage of payroll increasing more than a particular amount
• Funded ratio falling below particular selected level
• Benefit security (assets as a multiple of annual benefits) falling below a particular level
• Investment return in any one period falling into negative territory by more than a particular level
• Loss in assets is to a level below what would have been achieved had the actuarial rate been earned over a particular time frame.