Longevity fright 2

Sir, I can almost hear you ordering to publish Gillian Tett’s and Joanna Chung’s “Death and the salesmen” in the FT-Weekend, February 24, not so much because it concerns the somewhat “gruesome topic of death” but so as not to be unnecessarily identified as the messenger of bad news when reminding the pension and insurance markets of some of the more scary implications of the increased longevity of people. It is a great article and we are already waiting eagerly for Death and the salesmen 2, since some of the scariest characters have yet to appear, like for instance those who actuarially are not supposed to live so long, like the smokers and the obese.

Just you wait until these risk groups start arguing that “if they can’t have the cake they don’t want to pay for it too” and require they be excluded from the longevity groups that need to pay for the costs of it, and as this could really increase the average longevity of those expected to live long. In the UK, in annuities, we already find that smokers receive higher annuities than a non-smoker, which in financial terms seems to be right. That said there is a huge social problem in waiting from the increased tendency to tend to the individual need, and that is of course that the number of people left to do the sharing with, gets fewer and fewer, until there is only you.