The cost of employee benefits, including health-care insurance and pensions, top the list of pricing pressures that concern CFOs the most, according to a new national survey.

About 54 percent of 686 CFOs surveyed by Grant Thornton, LLP - a Chicago-based audit, tax, and advisory firm listed employee benefits as the top pricing pressure in their companies. Of the respondents, 48 were from New York, although Grant Thornton spokesperson Kristi Grgeta couldn't say for sure if any of them were from companies in Central New York.

The survey results are not a surprise, given trends in health-care costs. The CFOs have been conditioned to think that way because health-care costs have gone up so much in the past 10 years, says Sharon Whittle, a compensation consulting senior manager with Grant Thornton, who is based in Charlotte, N.C.

For 2009, health-care benefits costs are estimated to increase about 5 percent, which is lower than trends for the past 10 years, she says.

"But I think we've just seen such escalation, because they've really doubled since '99 and that's just at the top of the concern list," says Whittle.

Whittle says the cost-increase forecast of 5 percent comes from the Menlo Park, Calif.-based Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit, private-operating foundation focusing on the major health-care issues facing the United States.

It's been difficult to deliver affordable health-care benefits to employees, she says. Health insurers have changed their plans a lot structurally by increasing deductibles, getting the consumer more engaged, putting more focus on wellness, so employers and employees can afford health coverage.

The Grant Thornton survey came out before the recent downturn in the stock markets and the. economy in general, says Raymond Berry, compensation and benefits consulting senior manager, who is based in Chicago.

However, he also says the concern about funding pensions didn't start with the downturn in the financial markets.

He points to the Pension Protection Act of 2006 that changed the minimum funding rules for defined-benefit pension plans. The law basically requires companies to have their pension plan funded in seven years, Berry said.

"Prior law basically allowed you to set up a plan and maybe fund it over 20 to 30 years, so obviously the contributions are expected to be higher," says Berry.

He suspects the higher contributions played a role in how respondents answered the pricing-pressure question.

Of the 686 companies with CFOs or controllers who responded, 20 generate annual revenue greater than $5 billion, 33 produce between $1 billion and $5 billion, 44 have annual sales of between $500 million and $1 billion, 146 generate between $100 million and $500 million, and 443 produce less than $100 million in revenue annually, according to Grant Thornton.

Respondents could choose more than one area of cost concern. In addition to employee benefits, 40 percent viewed the cost of energy as a major. concern, 39 percent pointed to the cost of raw materials such as food and metals, and 16 percent felt the cost of insurance is the top pricing pressure.

The national communications team at Grant Thornton conducted the survey between Sept. 8 and Sept. 19 through e-mail invitations to subscribers of CFO magazine. Grant Thornton conducts a survey of senior financial executives twice a year.

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