Insurer of Retirement Plans Posts Surplus

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., a federal government agency that insures corporate retirement plans, said it had a surplus of $7.7 billion for the year ended Sept. 30, as premium income offset payouts and losses in stocks.

The agency said its single-employer program, which covers about 35 million workers, had assets of about $21.7 billion and liabilities of about $14 billion last year. It was the sixth consecutive annual surplus after more than 20 years of deficits.

In fiscal 2001, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. assumed responsibility for 104 terminated single-employer plans covering almost 89,000 people. This was the largest one-year increase in plan participants.

In fiscal 2001, the agency had a net investment loss of $748million, as a $2.5-billion loss on equity investments outweighed a gain of about $1.8billion from fixed-income investments.