longevity

A new Swiss Re Economic Research & Consulting report reveals that Canadian pension funds have a significant amount of longevity risk to which they are exposed. Many public and private pension funds are under-reserved for longevity risks and annuity books also have exposure to the risk of scheme members living longer.

Lane Clark & Peacock LLP (LCP) have announced that they advised UK home and general merchandise retailed Home Retail Group in a £280m pensioner buy-in transaction for their pension scheme which saw them de-risk by transferring their liabilities to insurers.

The market for longevity risk trading, which many say has huge potential, could use exchange traded funds (ETF’s) as a trading mechanism once the market has enough liquidity, according to this article from IPE.com. When that liquidity will come is a question that the subject of the article Deutsche Börse would like to have answered.

As longevity risk becomes increasingly recognised by pension schemes, life insurers and investors its development as an asset class is growing said experts at a recent conference. The UK has been leading the way in the development of longevity risk transfer techniques but interest is growing in the U.S. and around the world as those […]

Proponents of longevity risk transfer through instruments such as securitization via a catastrophe bond type structure (in a similar manner to Swiss Re’s Kortis Capital deal), or swaps, derivatives and hedging mechanisms, will be pleased to learn that this has now become a topic of discussion in China.

A new report published by ratings agency Standard & Poor’s suggests that the traditional life reinsurance market has been shrinking since 2003 and now participants in this market are seeking new, non-traditional ways to stimulate growth. Another trend which is leading S&P to suggest that non-traditional risk transfer could see growth in the life reinsurance […]

Yesterday, we wrote about the new report from Swiss Re which discusses the role of state governments in insurance and the role that insurance-linked securities have to play in financing the risks that they face. The report also discusses the longevity risk issue and the role that governments could play in helping to establish a […]

To date there has only been a single insurance-linked security transaction which transferred the risk of policyholders living longer, or longevity risk, to the capital markets. That transaction, Kortis Capital Ltd. which was sponsored by Swiss Re, successfully came to market in December 2010 but so far no-one else has tried to emulate the deal.

KPMG reports today in a press release that the volume of pension buy-in deals in the UK has reached over £3 billion in the past year. Buy-ins see pension funds transfer some of their liabilities to the insurance market often with the sole purpose of offloading the longevity risk which is inherent in many large […]

An Aon Hewitt executive told Professional Pensions that even small pension schemes should consider hedging their longevity risks or entering into longevity risk transfer transactions. To date, longevity risk transfer transactions have been large affairs with schemes worth billions involved, but the Aon Hewitt representative suggests that could change.