CMI Working Paper 172

Working Paper 172 was published in March 2023. The paper describes the experience of pension annuities in payment in 2021, with the paper also including some comparisons to experience in 2016-2019 and 2020. Values underlying charts and a Tableau workbook, allowing interactive exploration of selected charts are available as accompanying outputs.

The analyses show that:

• For males, lives-weighted experience in 2021 is generally higher than the projected “16” Series tables, with a downward shape by age band. Experience is 14% higher than the projected tables at age band 65-69 and falling to be equal to the projected “16” Series tables for age band 90-94.
• For females, lives-weighted experience in 2021 is lower than the projected “16” Series tables overall, although not for all age-bands and there is again a downward shape by age band. Experience for females is 11% higher at younger age bands and falls to 5% lower than the projected “16” Series tables in the 90-94 age band.
• Average mortality improvements, when experience is expressed as Standardised Mortality Rates (SMRs), over 2015-2019 are lower in the annuities dataset than improvements in the population for males. For females, average mortality improvements over 2015-2019 are higher than for the population.
• For both males and females, mortality improvements in 2020 and 2021 are higher in the annuities dataset than the population, but this may be vulnerable to late reporting of deaths..

There are two outputs that accompany this paper:

• A spreadsheet that includes the values used in the charts in the working paper.
• A Tableau Workbook, allowing interactive exploration of selected charts in the working paper. Note that this requires access to Tableau Reader; this is free to download at: https://www.tableau.com/products/reader.

Note: this paper and the accompanying spreadsheets are available to Authorised Users only.