Mercer Offers Longevity Risk Reporting to Pension Plan Sponsors

Mercer and Club Vita, a firm specializing in longevity analytics, announced that Mercer is the first consulting firm to offer Club Vita’s longevity risk reporting to its clients in the United States, effective immediately.

As part of their five-year agreement, Mercer’s pension plan clients in the United States will have access to Club Vita’s proprietary longevity assumptions, analytics and reporting, which will help them to better assess and manage their plans’ longevity risk. In addition, the aggregate enhanced data set will also be used by Mercer’s consulting teams to provide more powerful insights to help with client decision making.

Bruce Cadenhead, chief actuary, Mercer, says, “Longevity has become a crucial focus for plan sponsors as people are living longer, particularly in the current low interest rate environment. By working with plan sponsors to collect more insightful data, we can tailor each plan’s assumptions to their participants, increasing transparency and, in turn, improving the value in pension risk transfer deals. Access to this data will help to justify lower pension liabilities in some cases.”  

Dan Reddy, U.S. CEO, Club Vita, says, “We aggregate longevity data to aid anyone who wants to be better informed about the true cost of their pension plan. By combining Mercer’s data with ours, and adding in our analytical strengths, we will empower pension plan decision makers to decide the best strategies to manage the costs associated with their plans.

Reddy adds, “In a recent pilot program, we tested data aggregated from over 100 U.S. pension plans. We found increases and decreases in pension plan liabilities of up to 6% relative to the standard Society of Actuaries tables, with a reduction in liabilities on average.”