Am I just being *****y?

[douglan]

Originally Posted by Roberbola

I too get annoyed by this. My favorite is when I get the standard 401k plan checklist from an auditor to fill out instead of the DB plan checklist. I get a tremendous amount of personal satisfaction filling in "N/A" to every question and sending it back.

[Mark Cavazos]

Originally Posted by Samantha

Probably. And I trust you'll tell me so if you agree.

This happens every year. Big auditing firms send in junior auditors to cut their teeth on pension audits. But they give them no background training on what a pension is or how it works.

So they begin by asking the actuary to explain things. Now I don't mind explaining something that's out of the ordinary or unclear in my report. But I don't think it's my place to be teaching Pensions 101 to my clients' auditors. These multi-billion dollar firms expect me to train their people for free.

Here's the latest:



Does anyone else get frustrated by this? Or am I just having a bad day?

I like your optimism: that one day, auditors will understand FAS when they gain experience and knowledge.

From the questions that I have gotten, they never learn it.

[Dan Moore]

Here's a suggestion: bookmark some explanatory websites & respond to their questions with links. That way, you don't have to craft a response (someone's already done that) and it provides some independent verification that what you're saying is correct.

[DaveyDo]

Originally Posted by Dan Moore

Here's a suggestion: bookmark some explanatory websites & respond to their questions with links. That way, you don't have to craft a response (someone's already done that) and it provides some independent verification that what you're saying is correct.

Link to this thread.

[DaveyDo]

Lately auditors have been asking for the current pension valuation report. They are asking for the 2009 valuation report but auditing the 2008 plan year. Usually all they need is the FAS 35.

I'm in the process of revising the 2006 and 2007 valuations for a client who amended the plan in 2006 and did not bother to tell us. The auditors missed it also.

[Kenny]

[wooHoo]

This thread makes me laugh.

I've worked as actuary for a client and worked on audits for both plan and company financial statements.

this is amusing.... carry on.

[Kenny]

The auditors called me today because they were concerned about the lump sum payments made during 2009 from a collectively bargained plan with an agreement that is up for negotiation this year and that was frozen in the early 90s because the AFTAP we identified in the report - despite including a paragraph in bold explaining that it was for illustrative purposes only - was less than 60%. And oh yeah, the lump sums were all less than $3,000 each because the plan doesn't pay out lump sums larger than the auto cashout provisions.

But hey, at least they knew there was something related to having a low AFTAP that they needed to ask about.

[qwyjiboChu]

I find this kind of weird.

I was at one of those large public accounting firms (a Big 4 firm) for 5 years, in the actuarial consulting group, but the audit group pulled us in for nearly every one of their audits (both corporate and plan) so that we could ask for the appropriate items and save everyone on both sides a lot of hassle. We'd then finish up our piece of the project by writing a memo to the audit team to (hopefully) close most of their issues. I'm surprised to hear that these requests are coming from the large audit firms, as I thought they all had actuarial groups that they in-sourced this audit work to.

OTOH, I did receive these exact same requests from the auditors for my own clients. I distinctly remember explaining to the same person 3 years in a row that our valuation participant count differed from the data we received because we removed nonvested terminations from the data (among other things). THEN every year for 3 years I had to explain to this guy what a nonvested termination was and why there was no actuarial liability for it.

ETA: those auditors tended to be from really small companies, and it didn't surprise me at all that they wouldn't have internal actuaries to ask about that stuff

[MathGeek92]

My favorite dip-sh!t newbie question was.. "I see that your death claims are up 20% from last year. Why is that?"

No kidding. They then proceeded to ask why our annuity surrenders were 15% lower than last year.