Cite as: 510 U. S. 86 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
exempt "if" it provides for guaranteed benefits; it said a contract is exempt only "to the extent" it so provides. Using these words of limitation, Congress apparently recognized that contracts may provide to some extent for something other than guaranteed benefits, and expressly declared the exemption unavailable to that extent.
Tellingly with respect to GAC 50, the Pension Administration Fund is guaranteed only against a decline below its January 1, 1968, level. See supra, at 91. Harris thus bears a substantial portion of the risk as to fluctuations in the free funds, and there is not even the "modest income guaranty" the Seventh Circuit found insufficient in Peoria Union. 698 F. 2d, at 327. Furthermore, Hancock has the authority to set the price at which free funds are convertible into guaranteed benefits. See supra, at 92, n. 3. In combination, these features provide no genuine guarantee of the amount of benefits that plan participants will receive in the future.
It is true but irrelevant, Hancock pleads, that GAC 50 provides no guaranteed return to the plan, for ERISA uniformly uses the word "benefits" to refer exclusively to payments to plan participants or beneficiaries, not payments to plans. Brief for Petitioner 25; see also Mack Boring, 930 F. 2d, at 273 ("benefits" refers only to payments to participants or beneficiaries; payments to plan sponsors can be variable without defeating guaranteed benefit exclusion); Goldberg & Altman 482. This confinement of the word "benefits," however, perfectly fits the tight compass of the exclusion. A contract component that provides for something other than guaranteed payments to plan participants or beneficiaries— e. g., a guaranteed return to the plan—does not, without more, provide for guaranteed benefits and thus does not fall within the statutory exclusion. Moreover, the guaranteed benefit policy exclusion requires a guarantee of the amount of benefits to be provided; with no guaranteed investment return to the plan, and no guarantee regarding conversion price, plan participants are undeniably at risk inasmuch as
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