Immortality

[Colonel Smoothie]

Hey I have a question,

Are there any companies out there that have incorporated the possibility of biological immortality becoming available to their policyholders? I don't remember much from when I was on the life side, but I suppose if you had some kind of annuity product that paid out until a policyholder's death, it would be bad if that person lived 800 years longer than expected.

So how are companies planning on dealing with this when it happens? Like in the pricing/reserving of their products, etc.

[Colonel Smoothie]

I guess I could have put this in pensions too. But I suppose the issue overlaps with both categories. What considerations does the Social Security Administration have in the event that retirees obtain biological immortality?

These people probably won't live forever, and the last time I checked, the expected lifetime of a biologically immortal person would be about 1000 years...but this could be longer should the safety of automobiles improved.

Anyway, the obligation to pay hundreds of millions of retirees for a thousand years each would be catastrophic. Then again, if people could live that long, maybe they would also work longer as well.

Also, I was wondering what would happen if we developed the technology to resurrect deceased persons. If a person received benefits, died, and then was resurrected 5 years later, would they continue to receive benefits? Could a product be designed to cover the cost of such a resurrection?

[The Outfield]

Originally Posted by Colonel Smoothie

Also, I was wondering what would happen if we developed the technology to resurrect deceased persons. If a person received benefits, died, and then was resurrected 5 years later, would they continue to receive benefits? Could a product be designed to cover the cost of such a resurrection?

Would they have to pay back their life insurance? I'm thinking a family would rather keep their great grandparents in the ground than try to come up with $500,000.

[JohnLocke]

inflation would destroy the worth of the annuity

[asdfasdf]

Immortal politicians

[Abused Student]

As far as annuities and people living forever, some if not most nowdays have a stipulation where if you reach the end of the pricing mortality table or some age like that, you get paid your death benefit and get a pat on the back for a good run.

[twig93]

On the off chance that the OP was serious... no. Insurers are not worried about immortality. Advances in medicine make it more likely that people survive to a very old age. They have not ever changed the definition of what "very old age" means.

Few people live to 100 and virtually no one lives past 120. (One recorded case ever according to wikipedia.) Medicine is increasing the percentage of people who make it to 100. It's not having much of any impact on the percentage of people who make it past 120.

People lived to 100 centuries ago... it's just that a higher percentage do now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_people

As you can see, lots of folks are living to 110 and even 115. But hardly anyone survives past that. I predict more and more people will make it to those ages, but immortality... or even living to age 125 does not seem terribly realistic in the next few centuries. Accordingly, it's not something that's being planned for.

Increasingly, there is evidence which suggests that mortality in rich nations may actually start to decline as obesity rates increase and more and more bugs become resistant to antibiotics. So if anything, it's the opposite problem that should concern life insurers.

Life insurers already don't take mortality improvement into account in order to be conservative. But we could reach a point where they need to take worsening mortality into account. And I can definitely imagine heads exploding as insurers must assume that annuitant mortality will improve while at the same time assuming that mortality will worsen among those with life insurance.