Many people delay joining a pension plan until well into their working lives. We use a stochastic simulation model to show the cost of this delay in terms of the higher pension contributions that must eventually be paid to ensure an adequate retirement income. We find the levels of contributions...

Most defined contribution (DC) pension plans give their members a degree of choice over the investment strategy for their contributions. Many plans also offer a 'default' fund for members unable or unwilling to choose their own investment strategy. We analyse the range of default funds offered...

We analyse the range of default funds offered by UK stakeholder pension schemes, against the background of research that shows the majority of pension scheme members passively accept the default arrangements offered by the scheme sponsor. We find the default funds vary substantially in their...

We introduce a new modelling framework to explain socioeconomic differences in mortality in terms of an affluence index that combines information on individual wealth and income. The model is illustrated using data on older Danish males over the period 1985-2012 reported in the Statistics...

This paper updates Living with Mortality published in 2006. It describes how the longevity risk transfer market has developed over the intervening period, and, in particular, how insurance-based solutions – buy-outs, buy-ins and longevity insurance – have triumphed over capital markets...

The analysis of national mortality trends is critically dependent on the quality of the population, exposures and deaths data that underpin death rates. We develop a framework that allows us to assess data reliability and to identify anomalies, illustrated, by way of example, using England and...

We use a case study of a pension plan wishing to hedge the longevity risk in its pension liabilities at a future date. The plan has the choice of using either a customised hedge or an index hedge, with the degree of hedge effectiveness being closely related to the correlation between the value...

This paper updates Living with Mortality published in 2006. It describes how the longevity risk transfer market has developed over the intervening period, and, in particular, how insurance-based solutions – buy-outs, buy-ins and longevity insurance – have triumphed over capital markets...

The analysis of national mortality trends is critically dependent on the quality of the population, exposures and deaths data that underpin death rates. We develop a framework that allows us to assess data reliability and identify anomalies, illustrated, by way of example, using England & Wales...

The purpose of this paper is to identify a workhorse mortality model for the adult age range (i.e., excluding the accident hump and younger ages). It applies the “general procedure” (GP) of Hunt and Blake (2014) to identify an age-period model that fits the data well before adding in a...