Industry News

In October 2023, the Retirement Plans Experience Committee (RPEC) of the Society of Actuaries (SOA) issued its 2023 Mortality Improvement Update Report. Typically, the report provides an annually updated mortality improvement scale for pension plans in the United States.

In the 2023 report, the RPEC noted that the most recent data available is from the 2021 calendar year. The data was strongly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic similar to the mortality experience in 2020. As a result, the RPEC did not believe it would be appropriate to incorporate the substantially higher rates of mortality experience from 2020 and 2021, without adjustment. Therefore, without new data deemed predictive to future mortality, the RPEC has again decided not to produce a new projection scale in 2023.

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. In the first half of 2023, mortality rates for ages over 65 were below projections based on   pre-pandemic trends, although there was still considerable excess mortality among working-aged adults.

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

The report is available here.