Bayes' Pension Institute joins Roman quest around longevity and mortality

Bayes Business School’s influential Pensions Institute is co-hosting the leading international conference on the challenges and opportunities posed by changing patterns of longevity and mortality. Longevity 21 will bring together practitioners, policymakers and academics at Sapienza University of Rome on 8th-9th September.

Co-host David Blake, Professor of Finance and Director of the Bayes Pensions Institute, says the conference will explore mortality trends and forecasts, longevity and mortality risk and hedging solutions, health issues, and the sustainability of pension systems.

“It has been increasingly accepted for a generation that we need to recognise, quantify and manage longevity. It's crucial for pension plans, annuity providers, governments and individuals alike,” he said.

“Managing this risk, however, has proven to be exceptionally challenging, given the rapid advances in healthcare and anti-ageing treatments. Even official agencies have systematically mis-estimated changes in life expectancy and mortality trends.

“Longevity 21 will  examine the evolving landscape of longevity-related products – including pensions, annuities and reverse mortgages, and consider what the future may hold for each. That will include assessing progress in the development of the pension risk transfer market that started in the UK twenty years ago.

“However, this year's conference will also mark an important step towards broadening the traditional focus on longevity risk by placing mortality risk and its management more prominently on the international research and policy agenda.

“Mortality risk – the risk of shorter lives than anticipated – has come into focus in recent years as a result of the covid-19 pandemic, persistent excess mortality in some populations, widening health inequalities, demographic shifts, climate-related risks, increasing geo-political risks, and the potential for workers displaced by AI to experience 'deaths of despair'.

“This will have a big impact on insurers selling life assurance and other protection products. We will examine how mortality risk can be managed and transferred and whether there are parallels with the pension risk transfer market.

“All this highlights the importance of robust measurement, modelling and risk management approaches in an increasingly uncertain world.”

Keynote speakers include:

• Rohit Mathur  (Prudential Financial)
• Steven Baxter (Club Vita)
• Cara Dowell (RGA)
• Dale Hall (SOA Research Institute)
• Nino Savelli (Italian Council of Actuaries)
• Rita D’Ecclesia (Italian insurance regulator, IVASS)
• Annamaria Colao (Federico II University of Naples)
• Luca Tres (Guy Carpenter).

Registrations close on 28^th August but an ‘early bird’ offer expires two weeks earlier. Academics can register here and others here.

L21 conference website: https://www.bayes.citystgeorges.ac.uk/faculties-and-research/centres/pensions-institute/events/longevity-21