longevity hedge

Insurance and reinsurance broker and consultancy Aon has warned UK pension schemes not to over-react to the recent short-term spike in mortality rates in the country, as the impact to longevity risk assumptions may not be as significant as it seems.

Canada Life Reinsurance took EUR 5.3 billion of the long-term longevity risk associated with EUR 13.5 billion of in-force liabilities of NN Life’s portfolio, in the recently completed longevity swap and reinsurance arrangement.

NN Life, part of the Nationale-Nederlanden (NN Group), has secured reinsurance and swap arrangements with leading reinsurers Canada Life, Munich Re and Swiss Re to transfer all of the longevity risk associated with some EUR 13.5 billion of pension liabilities from the Netherlands.

NN Life, part of the Nationale-Nederlanden (NN Group), has entered into an index-based longevity hedge transaction with reinsurance firm Hannover Re, in a deal covering the insurer against longevity trend risk associated with around EUR 3 billion of its liabilities.

The €6 billion longevity risk transfer hedge completed recently by Dutch headquartered life, pensions and annuities focused insurer Aegon, which Artemis covered here yesterday, was supported by reinsurance capacity from Canada Life Re.

Dutch headquartered life, pensions and annuities focused insurer Aegon has completed its third longevity risk transfer transaction, hedging €6 billion of longevity reserves in the Netherlands to further reduce its exposure to longevity improvements.

Pension fund sponsors of longevity swaps can as much as halve the transaction costs by establishing their own special purpose insurance or captive vehicle, or using a service provider, in order to more directly access sources of longevity reinsurance capital.

The UK’s Merchant Navy Officers Pension Fund (MNOPF) has completed a direct longevity hedge or swap transaction with £1.5 billion of its members longevity risk ultimately being reinsured by life and longevity focused reinsurance firm Pacific Life Re.

A new survey performed by Mercer, the retirement specialist arm of brokerage Marsh & McLennan, found that UK defined benefit pension funds have continued to increase their life expectancy assumptions, leading to growing longevity risk.

Rating agency Moody’s warns that the impending release of new actuarial mortality tables, due by 31st October, could trigger a raft of pension risk transfer deals as the new mortality assumptions may add $100 billion to U.S. pension benefit obligations.