Measuring Intergenerational Fairness and Pensions

Einleitung/Dauer

Pension funds connect generations because of the long-term horizon of their transactions. Individuals pay pension contributions over several decades and, after retirement, ideally receive benefits for many years. At the same time, new cohorts continuously enter the workforce during an individual’s career, meaning that active workers and retirees always coexist. At any given moment, one group is contributing to the fund and building up pension rights, while another is receiving benefit payments. Over time, these successive periods shape the cash-flow model of pension systems.

Although this description may seem straightforward, the relationship between generations is far more complex. Modelling consists of all the future states of the future development of interrelated economic, demographic, and legal factors, all of which are highly likely to change over such a long-time horizon. These factors eventually change the financial sustainability or benefit adequacy of the pension fund and so favour certain groups of members over others.

Preliminary Programme
Thursday, 26 November 2026
09:00-10:30 Intergenerational fairness and adequacy and sustainability of pensions: an analytical approach
10:30-10:45 Break
10:45-12:15 Pension systems of socio-economic groups: a multi-state modelling approach

All the above times are given in CET (Central European Time).

Vorgehensweise und Ziele

Our aim is to provide pension actuaries and other interested experts with an overview of topics and methods in relation to the discussion of intergenerational fairness. This web session continues the first session in October 2025 and now dives deeper into actuarial modelling.

First, we will briefly introduce the concept of intergenerational fairness for those who couldn’t attend last October. This means that this session is generally open to all interested participants. According to the equity concept, similar careers should result in similar benefits, or even the value of the benefits should be equal to the contributions. From a different perspective, insured persons should get their (socially) agreed level of pensions over long periods under the same conditions, and even socially agreed needs also should be financed from the fund. These approaches lead to different conclusions from actuarial fairness to social fairness.

Both approaches represent the benefit adequacy aspect of pensions. Next, we deal with real life issues, where the financial sustainability of the pension systems is the hard limit for delivering pensions. At this layer external factors, like economic and demographic developments and, not independently, investment conditions matter. In case of funded pensions financial sustainability translates into funding and cost issues. Modelling pension systems is making assumptions about economic and demographic parameters.

The adequacy and sustainability objectives are contradictory by definition, and we must balance between them. Socio-economic groups embrace this duality of the problem. First, we discuss the traditional deterministic and stochastic or pricing model approaches. Next a generalized approach will be introduced, a multi-state model modelling the life paths of typical socio-economic groups. Deriving the economic and demographic parameters and managing a meaningful number of socio-economic groups is leading to a complex multi-state model. Predictive analytics and modelling AI tools may help overcome difficulties with scarce and not strongly related data and complex output interpretations.

Teilnehmer

Discussion of intergenerational fairness of pensions is a recurring topic on various forums ranging from policy making and the press to academic papers. This web session is intended to highlight new approaches for actuaries, statisticians, and economists who have an interest in the review or the governance of pension funds or pension systems – or just participating in such discussions. Maybe this will also be such an event!

Technical Requirements
Please check with your IT department if your firewall and computer settings support web session participation (the programme Zoom will be used for this online training). Please also make sure to join the web session with a stable internet connection.

Dozierende

Tibor Párniczky
Tibor is a senior expert in pension system regulation and development, with a wide range of experience in public and private pensions regulation and supervision. He is an independent consultant in the areas of pensions regulation and supervision, employee benefits, actuarial modeling and risk management. He has gained his key experiences in pension systems as one of the main architects of the Hungarian pension reforms and advisor to Eastern European Governments during the wake of the worldwide old age crisis. His participation in the development established his leadership career in civil service and relations with international organizations like the World Bank, the OECD and the EU. He was the initiator and founder of the International Organization of Pension Supervisors (IOPS).

Using his own experiences and international relations Tibor is now managing his independent consulting practice. He worked for leading multinational consultants and donor organisations. For example, he managed a common project of the USAID Partners for Financial Stability program and the OECD, covering countries from the Baltic region to Central and South Europe. His consulting practice now also includes Mongolia, Ukraine, Russia, Moldova, North Macedonia, Kosovo and African countries.

He graduated in mathematics at Eötvös Lóránd University and economics at Budapest Economics University and got actuarial training in program of the City University of London (UK) and the Corvinus Economic University (Hungary). Based on his actuarial background he also studied risk management and related issues of other financial sectors. Beside studying, he has experience in delivering training on financial supervisory and risk management topics. He is a delegate to the International Actuarial Association and the Actuarial Association of Europe and member of the Actuarial Committee of the Pension Fund of the United Nations (UNJSPF).

Sprache/Kurztitel

The language of the web session will be English.

CPD Credits
For this web session, the following CPD credits are available under the CPD scheme of the relevant national actuarial association:

• Austria: 3 points
• Belgium: 3 points
• Bulgaria: 4.5 points
• Croatia: individual accreditation
• Czechia: 3 hours
• Denmark: 3 credits
• Estonia: 3 hours
• Finland: 3 points
• France: 18 points
• Germany: 3 hours
• Greece: 4 points
• Hungary: 3 hours
• Iceland: 3 credits
• Ireland: 3 hours
• Italy: GdLA individual accreditation
• Latvia: 3 hours
• Lithuania: 3 hours
• Netherlands: approx. 3 points (individual accreditation)
• Norway: 3 points
• Poland: 3 hours
• Portugal: 3 hours
• Serbia: 3 hours
• Slovakia: individual accreditation
• Slovenia: individual accreditation
• Spain: CAC: 3 hours, IAE: 3 hours
• Switzerland: individual accreditation
• USA: SOA (Section B): up to 3.6 hours

No responsibility is taken for the accuracy of this information.