Industry News

In October 2024, the Retirement Plans Experience Committee (RPEC) of the Society of Actuaries (SOA) issued its 2024 Mortality Improvement Update Report. Prior to 2022, the reports provided annual updates to mortality improvement scale for pension plans in the United States. 

In the 2022 report, the RPEC noted that the then most recent data available was from the 2020 calendar year. The data was strongly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, as was the case for the mortality experience in 2021 and 2022. As a result, the RPEC did not believe it would be appropriate to incorporate the substantially higher rates of mortality experience from 2020, 2021 and 2022, without adjustment. Therefore, without new data deemed predictive to future mortality, the RPEC has again decided not to produce a new projection scale in 2024. 

However, the report includes a summary of emerging mortality trends and approaches for individual practitioners that may be inclined to incorporate their COVID-19 adjustments into the base improvement scale. It was observed that excess mortality relative to pre-pandemic trends began to significantly abate after the first quarter of 2022. Although monthly mortality rates for ages over 65 briefly declined below projections based on pre-pandemic trends during 2023 and 2024, emerging data reflecting U.S. mortality through June 2024 suggests that there is still a small amount of excess mortality for the population over age 65. 

In addition, the report notes that the RPEC will evaluate the 2023 data, when available. It will also consider whether incorporating a single year of additional information could generate a meaningful update to the MP-2021 scale. However, it is possible that the RPEC may determine that the best course would be to wait for three to five years of post-pandemic data prior to issuing an updated improvement scale.

Currently, Piotr Krekora, Senior Consultant for GRS, serves as a member of the RPEC. 

The report is available here.