A lot of people in the City are getting very excited about death

A lot of people in the City are getting very excited about death

By Ian King, business presenter

A lot of people in the City are getting very excited right now about death.

All of the big insurance companies have just been updating investors on how they have traded during the last 12 months and have confirmed an interesting recent theme.

On Tuesday last week, Phoenix Group, the life company that is just about to join the FTSE 100, announced it was releasing £168m of so-called "longevity reserves".

The following day, Legal & General said it was releasing £433m in the same way, while on Thursday last week Aviva released a thumping £780m. Then, on Wednesday this week, Prudential released £441m of reserves.


Image: Aviva released a thumping £780m in reserves

What has this to do with death? Simple. Longevity reserves are the funds that life companies set aside to cover the risk that the customers whose pensions they pay live longer than expected.

The reserves are now being released because the life companies have been overestimating how long their customers will live and do not need to set aside quite so much cash.

The trend has been emerging during the last few years but has now been well and truly confirmed. It has delivered a windfall of almost £2bn to the life sector.

The question is whether the life companies were too conservative in the assumptions they were making about the mortality of their customers or whether there are other factors at play.

The answer appears to be a bit of both. Nigel Wilson, the chief executive of Legal & General, admitted last week that, to begin with, the company had assumed rising mortality rates were a one-off factor. But he added: "It's become more of a trend than a blip."

The question is whether the life companies were too conservative in the assumptions they were making about the mortality of their customers or whether there are other factors at play.

Worryingly, this does not appear to be a temporary phenomenon. The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, which calculates life expectancy for the industry, says it first saw evidence of falling life expectancy in 2010-11.

It reported last week that it now expects a man aged 65 can expect to live to 86 years and nine months - down from its previous estimate of 87 years and four months. A 65-year old woman is now expected to live until she is 89 years and two months, down from 89 years and seven months previously.

These reductions in life expectancies are the biggest the institute has ever made.

This is a very significant change that threatens to upend all of the assumptions we have been making about life expectancy.

Until recently, it has been assumed that people are going to continue to live longer, with life expectancy steadily improving.

Image: A 65-year old woman is now expected to live until she is 89 years and two months

It is one reason why both the last Labour government and the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition raised the age at which the state pension becomes payable. Numerous books - with titles like The 100-Year Life - have been published exploring the implications of millions more people becoming centenarians.

But the institute's committee, which looks at mortality projections, believes the data suggests improvements in life expectancy actually peaked as long ago as 2004 for men and in 2006 for women.

Tim Gordon, who chairs the committee, said: "It's widely accepted that mortality improvements in the general population since 2011 have been much lower than in the earlier part of this century.

"The lower level of improvements may be due to medium or long-term influences, rather than just short-term volatility."

Image: Life companies have been over-estimating how long their customers will live

The institute is not the only body highlighting these new circumstances.

Mike McCollum, chief executive of Dignity, the UK's largest quoted funeral provider, noted this week that the number of deaths in 2018 was 599,000 - up 2% on 2017.

He told City analysts: "The Office for National Statistics expects long-term increases in the number of deaths, reaching approximately 700,000 per year by 2040."

That reflects the rise in the general population and the passing of the generation born in the post-war baby boom. It may also, though, reflect worsening mortality.

Some people, such as John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, have sought to blame austerity for this deterioration in improvements in life expectancy.

However, that seems wide of the mark, as improvements in life expectancy have also been slowing in other European countries, including Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Sweden.

One factor could be that these countries, as with Britain, are relatively wealthy and already had high life expectancies.

It may well be that a lot of those assumptions about an ageing population - and its likely impact on the economy - will need to be revisited.

Poorer European countries, such as the former communist states of central and eastern Europe, are still seeing improvements in life expectancy as their healthcare standards catch up with those of northern and western Europe.

The same effect is also being seen outside Europe. Canada and Australia have seen a slowdown in the rate of improvement in life expectancy during the last six years.

Most striking has been the situation in the US: life expectancy for Americans peaked as long ago as 2014 and has since been falling due mainly to a rise in opioid abuse and diabetes-related deaths.

Another factor could be that, as the UK's population has got older, we face a greater incidence of age-related illnesses.

Public Health England has previously highlighted a spike in deaths in the winters of 2014-15 and 2017-18 due to a particularly aggressive strain of flu that claimed the lives of thousands of elderly Britons.

There is also the law of inevitability. The rate at which life expectancy improves was bound to slow down at some stage.

Medical breakthroughs in the latter half of the 20th century and the beginning of this century saw a big drop in deaths caused by communicable diseases such as measles, hepatitis, malaria, tuberculosis, typhoid and cholera.

The World Health Organisation notes that nearly two-thirds of all deaths globally are now due to non-communicable diseases such as cancer, diabetes, chronic lung disease and cardiovascular disease. Medical science has not found it as easy to eliminate these conditions as it did communicable diseases.

Moreover, many of these conditions are caused by lifestyle choices, such as poor diet, lack of exercise and obesity.

So it may well be that a lot of those assumptions about an ageing population - and its likely impact on the economy - will need to be revisited.

What has not changed is the continuing pressure on the NHS. Someone who has diabetes due to a poor diet will still place a burden and impose a cost on the service regardless of whether they live six months less than they were expected to a few years ago.

And it certainly doesn't mean we can go easier in terms of saving for our retirement. Even if our pension funds are stuffed with shares of life companies.

Sky Views is a series of comment pieces by Sky News editors and correspondents, published every morning.

Previously on Sky Views: Rowland Manthorpe - Tech giants' free pass means they haven't innovated in years