The big actuarial firm Watson Wyatt pointed out that mortality and longevity varies between different parts of the population.
"Mortality really is scheme specific and too prescriptive a trigger will not fit that very comfortably, " said James Wintle of Watson Wyatt.
Other firms with double roles as gatekeepers and as advisers to stock pickers include Watson Wyatt Worldwide and Wilshire Associates.
Watson Wyatt, an employee-benefits consultancy, says that American multinationals increasingly are applying a common compensation scheme to all their operations.
According to Watson Wyatt, the average cost of running a pension fund has increased by 50% over the past five years.
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According to a survey carried out by Watson Wyatt, a consulting firm, three-quarters of American companies have implemented a hiring freeze.
Pay-and-benefits consultants also suffered: sharply falling revenues were one reason why Towers Perrin and Watson Wyatt decided to merge last year.
There are times it makes sense to pay extra to carry a second, overlapping policy, notes John Bowe, a Washington-based consultant at Watson Wyatt.
Watson Wyatt Worldwide, a human-resources consultancy, says the proportion of American employers implementing either wage cuts or furloughs has risen sharply since October (see chart 1).
Stephen Yeo, of the actuarial firm Watson Wyatt, said the new scheme would provide significantly better pensions for many civil servants, in return for working longer.
According to Watson Wyatt, an actuarial consultancy, over half of major private-sector employers reviewing their final-salary schemes in the past five years have closed them to new members.
Problems may be worse for smaller companies and the subsidiaries of foreign firms, where pension funds usually have a lower ratio of assets to liabilities, says Stephen Yeo of Watson Wyatt.
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Just facing up to the impact is Watson Wyatt, a global human resources consultancy that went public only recently and began trading on the New York Stock Exchange two weeks ago.
Ira Kay of Watson Wyatt, a pay consultant, thinks it might, because rising pay on Wall Street in recent years led to higher pay elsewhere a trend that may now operate in reverse.
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Watson Wyatt retirement counsel Kyle Brown says the IRS deserves credit for trying to get in front of this issue, but adds that the proposed regulations contain some onerous paperwork requirements that could scare off firms.
Meanwhile, the table, prepared for forbes by Watson Wyatt senior consultant Alan Glickstein, shows how workers of a certain age and job tenure fare if their plan is hard frozen, meaning that even senior workers earn no additional benefits.
They think this may be a once in a lifetime opportunity to change the paradigm, '' says Joseph Martingale , national leader for health care strategy at benefits consultants Watson Wyatt (nyse: WW - news - people ).
Eighteen percent of the 1, 000 big companies with defined benefit plans had, as of last December, frozen at least one of their plans, with the majority of those freezes occurring in 2004 or 2005, according to consultants Watson Wyatt Worldwide.
The surest sign trouble lies ahead for pensions is the recent effort by some of the largest actuarial and pension consulting firms, including Milliman, Towers Perrin and Watson Wyatt, to coerce their pension clients to agree to limitation of liability (LOL) provisions in their contracts.
FORBES: Actuarial Limitations of Liability? (LOL) Laugh Out Loud! (December 1, 2002 )
Lofgren , global director of the benefits consulting group at Watson Wyatt, which is working for the new employers' coalition, says that in recent years (since the IBM blowup), nearly all converting employers have protected employees 50 and above who are within five years of retirement.
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