Kwasha Lipton

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Kwasha Lipton was an employee benefits consulting firm located in Fort Lee, New Jersey. It was founded in 1944 by H. Charles "Chick" Kwasha and Maurice Lipton.

Kwasha Lipton is best known for creating a special type of defined benefit pension plan called a cash balance plan. It was created for the employees of Bank of America in the 1980's. Kwasha Lipton implemented dozens of cash balance plans for its other clients, and these plans were ultimately adopted by various companies throughout the United States. The plans are somewhat controversial, because in general they offer larger benefit to younger workers than traditional Final Average Pay plans. This means that some middle-aged and older workers experience reductions in the value of their pension when a traditional plan is converted to a cash balance plan.

Kwasha Lipton merged in 1996 with another employee benefits firm, Coopers & Lybrand, to form The Kwasha Lipton Group of Coopers & Lybrand. The entire entity then merged with Price Waterhouse on July 1, 1998 to form the company PricewaterhouseCoopers. The group was then spun off and sold to Mellon Financial to become Mellon HR Solutions, which was sold to Affiliated Computer Services for $405 million in 2005

Kwasha Lipton occupied a famous building in Fort Lee, New Jersey. It was the first building visible to the North after passing from New York to New Jersey across the George Washington Bridge, and offered spectacular views of the bridge and the Manhattan skyline. The 13-story building has 139,000 square feet of office space, and was sold in July, 2005 for $33.7 million. Mellon HR Solutions remains the primary occupant leasing the building.