Company: AILIM
Filing Date: 2025-02-18
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001002910-25-000055
Chunk: 2

Company: Ameren Illinois Co
Filing Date: 2025-02-18
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 7A
Chunk 2
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 impact of economic conditions, including inflationary pressures, on customer 

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Table of Contents

collections and customer account balances. Ameren Missouri and Ameren Illinois make adjustments to their respective allowance for doubtful accounts as deemed necessary to ensure that such allowances are adequate to cover estimated uncollectible customer account balances.

Investment Price Risk

Plan assets of the pension and postretirement trusts, the nuclear decommissioning trust fund, and COLI contracts include equity and debt securities. The equity securities are exposed to price fluctuations in equity markets. The debt securities are exposed to changes in interest rates.

Our costs for providing defined benefit retirement and postretirement benefit plans are dependent upon a number of factors, including the rate of return on plan assets. Ameren manages plan assets in accordance with the “prudent investor” guidelines contained in ERISA. Ameren’s goal is to ensure that sufficient funds are available to provide benefits at the time they are payable, while also maximizing total return on plan assets and minimizing expense volatility consistent with its tolerance for risk. Ameren delegates investment management to specialists. Where appropriate, Ameren provides the investment manager with guidelines that specify allowable and prohibited investment types. Ameren regularly monitors manager performance and compliance with investment guidelines.

The expected return on plan assets assumption is based on historical and projected rates of return for current and planned asset classes in the investment portfolio. Projected rates of return for each asset class are estimated after an analysis of historical experience, future expectations, and the volatility of the various asset classes. After considering the target asset allocation for each asset class, we adjust the overall expected rate of return for the portfolio for historical and expected experience of active portfolio management results compared with benchmark returns, and for the effect of expenses paid from plan assets. Contributions to the plans and future costs could increase materially if we do not achieve pension and postretirement asset portfolio investment returns equal to or in excess of our 2025 assumed return on plan assets of 6.75%.

Ameren Missouri also maintains a trust fund, as required by the NRC and Missouri law, to fund certain costs of nuclear plant decommissioning. As of December 31, 2024, this fund was invested in domestic equity securities (68%) and debt securities (31%). By maintaining a portfolio that includes long-term equity investments, Ameren Missouri seeks to maximize the returns to be used to fund nuclear decommissioning costs within acceptable parameters of risk. Ameren Missouri actively monitors the portfolio by benchmarking the performance of its investments against certain indices and by maintaining