Pensions Conference 2011. Review of Workshop C1: Monitoring longevity and demographic trends

Is anything a constant where demographics are concerned?

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This might be the key message to take away from this presentation on ‘Monitoring longevity and demographic trends’.

The session began with a review of how the mortality experience of individual pension schemes might be monitored and identified some of things to look out for when doing so – it also described how Club Vita’s analytics are helping pension schemes understand the longevity of their membership.

The primary aim of the session was to consider what Club Vita’s dataset and other data sources can tell actuaries about other demographic trends – being most interested in areas where assumptions are required in the calculations that we carry out. 

The presentation sought to challenge the audience to reconsider some of the demographic assumptions that they adopt as ‘standard’.  One of the questions considered, for example, was do men really marry women that are three years younger, and if they do, where is the evidence?  For each assumption the evidence from relevant data sources was considered and compared with information that Club Vita has been able to extract from its own dataset.  The presenter took great delight in highlighting some of the rule-breakers (consider Rod Stewart and Penny Lancaster’s age difference) and other obscure information that consultants may want to consider (eg the occupation-specific nature of divorce rates).

The presentation concluded with a discussion on, and a challenge to consider, whether demographic assumptions should (or could?) be considered at a more granular level reflecting the liability-weighting of different membership groups who are likely to have different experience in relation to the common demographic assumptions.