Time to Consider the Appropriateness of COLAs
Brad Armstrong & Pete Strong
Gabriel Roeder Smith & Company

 

Pete Strong is a Senior Consultant located in GRS’ Fort Lauderdale, Florida office. Pete has more than 20 years of actuarial and benefits consulting experience. He provides actuarial and consulting services for both public and private sector (middle market) employee retirement systems and OPEB plans. Pete’s pension plan experience includes defined benefit plans and hybrid arrangements, covering plan design features such as final average pay, career average pay, target benefit, and early retirement windows. His actuarial work covers valuations, GASB/FASB accounting disclosure, plan design studies, experience studies, and cash flow projections. He has particular expertise in modeling studies including asset/liability studies using deterministic and stochastic approaches. Pete’s regulatory and compliance knowledge includes the Pension Protection Act of 2006 and Internal Revenue Code Sections 401(a), 410, and 415. He also has many years of experience with retiree health valuations related to GASB OPEB and FAS 106. Pete’s knowledge of actuarial software is an added strength. In addition to experience with GRS’ internal actuarial software, he has many years of experience working with ProVal and other actuarial valuation systems. He also has experience converting actuarial valuations and models from one valuation system to another. His valuation conversion expertise ensures an efficient and timely transition for new clients during the initial replication process.

 

Brad Armstrong is a Senior Consultant in GRS’ Southfield, Michigan office.  He has 30 years of actuarial and benefits consulting experience with the last 25 years being exclusively working with public employee benefit programs.  Brad has experience with public pension plans of varying sizes and complexity, ranging from state systems to municipal and county clients.  He has worked extensively with pension plans in Florida, Maryland, Michigan, and Missouri.  He has also conducted actuarial audits for statewide plans in Iowa and Texas, county plans in California and managed special projects for public employee retirement systems in Arizona, Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin.

In addition to regular valuations, Brad has broad proficiency with experience studies, GASB 67 and 68 compliance, plan design analyses, cash flow projections, risk analyses, and early retirement incentive studies.  He also has experience providing retiree health valuations for both funding and reporting.