The Society of Actuaries published revised mortality tables for private-sector retirement plans.
The new tables, which the society released Wednesday, provide a new basis for U.S. pension fund mortality assumptions.
The new private-sector retirement plan tables, Pri-2012, were available for comment beginning in May and running through July 31.
The latest tables are based on data collected for 2010-2014 and are named after the central year, 2012. They include 16.1 million life years of exposure and 343,000 deaths from 402 plans, and include both single and multiemployer pension plans.
While the prior table, RP-2006, lacked significant multiemployer data, the new one includes a substantial amount of data — about 41% of the total dataset and 70% of all multiemployer data — coming from these plans.
When moving to the Pri-2012 from the PR-2006 tables, the life expectancy for a 65-year-old male pension plan participant declines to 84.7 years from 85 years, while the life expectancy of a 65-year-old female pension plan participants remains relatively unchanged at 87.4 years, according to a news release from SOA announcing the new tables.
"The Pri-2012 dataset is almost 50% larger than the data that was available when we developed our previous tables five years ago," said R. Dale Hall, managing director of research for the SOA, in the news release. "We're proud to provide such a robust dataset to arm pension actuaries and plan sponsors with the latest data to measure private pension plan obligations and make forward-looking mortality assumptions."
The report on the tables, along with additional data, is available on the Society of Actuaries' website.
