Industry News

In October 2025, the Retirement Plans Experience Committee (RPEC) of the Society of Actuaries (SOA) issued its RPEC 2025 Mortality Improvement Update Report. This report presents research into recent population mortality experience compiled by the RPEC pertinent to the development of mortality improvement assumptions for measuring obligations of retirement programs in the United States.

Prior to 2022, the reports provided annual updates to the mortality improvement scale for pension plans. 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 not released a new projection scale since MP-2021, which reflects historical U.S. population mortality experience through 2019.

However, the RPEC has continued to review emerging general population mortality data to study the effect of the pandemic on U.S. mortality rates. It observed that excess mortality rates have continued to decline since the peak of the pandemic. Through June 2025, the emerging data suggests that there is still a small amount of excess mortality for the population over age 65. Although the worst effects of the pandemic on mortality have subsided, the RPEC again decided to not release a new scale in 2025. It cited that there is not yet sufficient post-pandemic data to develop an updated MP scale.

In addition, the report notes that, “The underlying data used by the study has been updated, including new population figures from the Social Security Administration. This updated data affected the RPEC’s reported ratios of actual-to-expected (A/E) death counts, including for the years covered in last year’s report. While the resulting A/E analysis may not apply directly to any specific retirement plan, it does provide updated information regarding national mortality trends during and through COVID periods.”

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

​The report is available here.