SCOTT STREBLE
Ramona Anderson, a retired ELCA pastor from St. Paul, Minn., guards every dollar and is grateful for her 2014 annuity increase.
Clergy, lay retirees begin to see increases
After three years of income decreases, things improve By John Brooks
F
or many current lay and ros- tered retirees, the past few years brought some economic uncer-
tainty. Stock market declines in 2008 and 2009 adversely affected annuity payments to more than 11,000 retir- ees in the ELCA Participating Annu- ity, and another 300 in its Bridge Account. But beginning in 2013, and again
in 2014, the trend in payments to annuitants improved. Trustees of Portico Benefit Services, Minne- apolis (formerly the ELCA Board of Pensions), approved increases aſter three consecutive years of annu- ity payment cuts. For 2014 trustees approved a 3 percent increase in annuity payments, in addition to the 1.1 percent increase it granted in 2013. With the global economic decline
of 2008-09, Portico scrambled to deal with a 26 percent funding
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deficit in the ELCA Participat- ing Annuity and Bridge Account. In April 2009 it closed the ELCA Participating Annuity and Bridge Account to new entrants. Te ELCA Participating Annuity opened again in 2011. Because of the severe funding
deficit, Portico announced that beginning in 2010, annuity pay- ments to retirees would be reduced by 9 percent. At the time, annuitants were told to expect possible addi- tional cuts of up to 9 percent in each of the next two years. Tat didn’t happen because the fund began to recover, as did financial markets. Te reductions that followed
were less severe—an additional 6 percent reduction was put in place for 2011 and another 3.8 percent in 2012. “We were not immune to the great recession,” said Jeffrey Tie-
SCOTT STREBLE
Chuck and Hertha Lutz supplement their retirement funds with his writing income. Lutz is a retired lay professional who lives in Minneapolis.
mann, Portico’s president and CEO. “I am painfully aware of how that has been very challenging for our annuitants.” But overall Tiemann is confi-
dent Portico made good decisions in managing the annuity fund during those difficult years and made “rea- sonable adjustments” in payments to retirees based on market condi- tions. “Our members, our man- agement team, our board and the ELCA overall can have a great deal of confidence that we have served members well so they will receive payments for life,” he said. Lay and rostered retirees experi-
enced reductions in their monthly annuity payments in different ways. For example, Charles Lutz, Min- neapolis, a lay professional with the former American Lutheran Church and ecumenical organizations, said his annual annuity income went down about $10,000 total from 2010 to 2012. But for Lutz and his wife, Hertha, the effects haven’t been severe, thanks to other income sources such as Social Security. “Te only thing that has changed
for us is we’ve been able to invest less,” said Lutz, 82, who also edited the Metro Lutheran newspaper in the Twin Cities. “Tere is a some-
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