Our pension system, within the mutual insurance companies, is much less generous than what currently exists in the federal government. Despite that fact, our system is seriously underfunded. We are currently evaluating how much money would have to be injected in order to keep our system afloat.
We are fortunate to have a defined benefit program, but it is not fully indexed to inflation, like the federal government plan. Federal employees retire on average between two and two and a half years earlier than in the private sector, which creates a huge difference. A great deal of money is invested in the pension plan and is therefore not invested in the private sector. That difference is unacceptable.