Most mid-market employers learn their pension number once a year, in a valuation report nobody on the board can read. Summit gives you the funded status, the cash call, and the risk that's coming — in plain language, refreshed every quarter, signed by a credentialed actuary. So the contribution is a decision you make on purpose, never a surprise you absorb.
Built on the standards your auditors, trustees, and regulators already trust
Big-firm actuarial work is priced for the Fortune 500 and delivered once a year in a language built for regulators, not boards. We rebuilt the engagement for the 200-to-5,000-employee plan: the same credentialed rigor, delivered quarterly, explained so a CFO can act on it and a trustee can sign off without a translator.
We roll your plan forward every quarter using live asset values and current discount rates, not last year's snapshot. You always know whether you're ahead of plan or behind it, what changed, and what it means for next year's cash — months before the formal valuation locks the answer in. No more steering a multi-million-dollar liability by a number that's eleven months old.
Every engagement produces a one-page summary your trustees actually read: funded ratio, contribution, the two or three risks that matter this year, and the recommendation. The full actuarial detail sits behind it for the auditors. One document, two audiences, zero translation.
We project required contributions five years out under good markets and bad, so the funding line in your budget is a plan, not a shock. When a year of poor returns would spike the call, you see it coming with time to phase it in.
As your plan approaches full funding, sitting in equities is gambling with a lead you already have. We design and monitor a de-risking glide path that locks in funded status by shifting toward liability-matching assets at pre-agreed trigger points — automatically flagged, never improvised.
You're assigned a Fellow of the actuarial society who signs your valuation, joins your board meeting, and picks up the phone when a member files for early retirement. Not a rotating pool, not an offshore queue — one accountable name on the work and the relationship.
What disciplined actuarial work looks like in the numbers
An actuarial valuation is only useful if someone can act on it. We built a four-step engagement that turns raw plan data into a clear, defensible call — and keeps it current all year, not just at year-end.
We start with a clean-up: reconcile your census, verify member data, and pressure-test the assumptions your prior actuary carried forward. Bad data is the silent driver of bad numbers, so we fix the inputs before we trust the output.
We measure your obligation under the standards your plan reports to — going-concern, solvency, and accounting — using discount rates and mortality tables that reflect today, not a convenient default. You see how each basis moves the number and why.
We run the plan forward five years across market scenarios to show the contribution range you should budget for and the events that would break the plan. The output is a decision set, not a single point estimate.
We refresh funded status every quarter and flag the moment a glide-path trigger, a regulatory change, or a market move calls for action — so you're never surprised by your own pension plan.
Start with the valuation you're due and add the rest as the plan demands it. One actuary, one model, one accountable relationship across all of it.
Going-concern, solvency, and accounting valuations prepared and signed by a credentialed actuary, with the assumptions explained and the cash impact spelled out in plain terms.
A budgeted contribution plan modeled across market scenarios, so the funding line is set on purpose and stays inside the range your board approved.
A liability-driven investment framework with pre-agreed triggers that take risk off the table as funded status climbs, monitored quarterly and flagged the day a trigger is hit.
When it's time to settle the obligation, we run the buy-out analysis, manage the insurer quote process, and shepherd the wind-up from board resolution to final filing.
Year-end expense, disclosure figures, and the roll-forward your auditors expect, delivered on their timeline with the working papers attached.
Reviews of defined-contribution adequacy, hybrid plan design, and benefit changes — modeled for cost and member outcome before you put them to a vote.
“Our old actuary handed us a 60-page report once a year and wished us luck. Summit gives me a one-page funded-status update every quarter that I forward straight to the board. For the first time in a decade, nobody around that table is surprised by the contribution.”
“We were 88% funded and sitting in equities like it was 2009. They built us a glide path, and when we crossed full funding last spring the de-risking trigger fired exactly as designed. We locked in the win instead of giving it back in the next downturn.”
“When we decided to wind up the plan, Summit ran the buy-out analysis, drove the insurer quotes, and walked our trustees through every number. What I'd been dreading for years closed cleanly in one cycle.”
No surprise invoices, no hourly meter running every time you call. We scope the work to your plan once, quote a flat annual fee, and you always know what the actuarial relationship costs.
For a single plan that needs its statutory work done right.
For sponsors who want to steer the plan all year, not once.
For multi-plan sponsors and plans being settled or transferred.
The big firms are, and they price and staff accordingly — your plan becomes a junior analyst's rounding error. Summit is built specifically for the 200-to-5,000-member plan: a credentialed actuary who knows your plan by name, the same technical rigor a large plan gets, and a fee scaled to your size rather than theirs.
Because a number that's eleven months old can't help you make a decision today. Markets move, discount rates move, and your contribution moves with them. A quarterly roll-forward means you spot a funding shortfall — or a chance to de-risk — with months to act, instead of finding out when the formal valuation finally lands.
One. You're assigned a Fellow of the actuarial society who signs your valuation, attends your board meetings, and is the person you call. On larger and wind-up engagements that actuary leads a named team, but the accountable relationship is always a person, never a queue.
A glide path is a pre-agreed plan to shift from return-seeking assets toward liability-matching assets as your funded status improves — so once you've nearly won the funding game, you stop risking the lead. If your plan is approaching full funding and still heavily in equities, you almost certainly need one, and we'll model it before you commit to it.
Yes, and we prefer to. We're the actuary, not the asset manager or the record-keeper. We slot in alongside the advisors and administrators you already trust, give them the liability picture they need to do their jobs, and keep everyone working from the same set of numbers.
We scope your plan once, in detail, and quote a flat annual fee for the agreed work. Routine calls, board attendance, and the quarterly refresh are inside that fee — you're not billed every time you pick up the phone. If the scope genuinely changes, such as adding a wind-up, we quote that work separately and in advance.
Send us your latest valuation and census, and we'll come back with a no-obligation read on your funded status, the risks we see, and what a Summit engagement would cost. About a week, and the conversation is free.