Industry News

On October 25, 2019, the Retirement Plans Experience Committee (RPEC) of the Society of Actuaries (SOA) issued its Mortality Improvement Scale MP-2019 Report.  The report provides the new MP-2019 Mortality Improvement Scale, which is an annually updated mortality improvement scale for pension plans.  The new scale suggests that life expectancies decreased slightly, which may result in slightly lower pension plan obligations.  According to the SOA’s report, their preliminary estimates indicate that, generally, updating from MP-2018 to the MP-2019 scale may reduce a pension plan’s obligations by about 0.3% to 1.0%, when calculated using a 4.0% discount rate.

The MP-2019 scale incorporates the most recent publicly available mortality data from the Social Security Administration (SSA) for 2015 and 2016.  In addition, it includes preliminary 2017 data developed by the SOA and acquired from the SSA, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the U.S. Census Bureau. 

As reported by the National Center for Health Statistics, the age-adjusted U.S. mortality rate was 0.4% higher for 2017 than in 2016.  In addition, the period 2010-2017 had the lowest average rate of U.S. mortality improvement than any eight-year period since 1962-1969.

Currently, Piotr Krekora, Consultant for GRS, serves as a member of the RPEC and David Kausch, Chief Actuary for GRS, previously served as a member and chairperson of the RPEC.

MP-2019 is available here.