The funded status of the typical U.S. pension plan declined 3.3 percentage points on a reporting basis last month, according to BNY Mellon Asset Management.
The drop was due to weakness in the global equity markets, which was the worst monthly stock performance in five years.
“However,” says Peter Austin, executive director of BNY Mellon Asset Management, “long-maturity U.S. Treasury bond yields were only six basis points lower, which held the liabilities of these plans essentially flat.”
The reporting basis is designed to track the new funding rules adopted by the U.S. Treasury Department and financial reporting guidelines implemented last year by the Financial Accounting Standards Board.
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