Cogent: 80% Of US Pensions Underfunded

Just one in five U.S. pension plans has enough assets to meet obligations, a state of affairs caused largely by overly optimistic projections of investment returns that points to a range of possible scenarios, from changing benefits to pensions going broke, according to a study from Cogent Research. About 54 percent of public pensions say their current funding status is below 80 percent of what is necessary to meet their obligations, and 16 percent of the pensions are below 60 percent of what they’ll need, according to Cogent’s “Institutional Investor Brandscape” study. This shortfall is even more acute among the...