Longevity Swaps

The longevity swap market is heating up with many employers / plan sponsors who offer traditional defined benefit pension plans eager to offload longevity-related liabilities to parties who are interested in assuming the risk.

Longevity swaps--similar to other risk transfer mechanisms such as bulk annuity buyout--enable defined benefit pension plan sponsors to remove from their plans the risk that plan participants live longer than expected.

One of the most recent longevity swap deals involves BMW's defined pension plan.  The counterparty to the swap is Abbey Life which is the life insurance subsidiary of Deutsche Bank.

An article on this longevity swap can be found by clicking here.