Mortality rates in England and Wales have fallen 3.8 per cent lower in 2019 than 2018, the largest drop since 2011, new statistics from the Continuous Mortality Investigation (CMI) have shown.

The fall has seen industry experts raise concerns over the risks this could pose to defined benefit (DB) pension scheme liabilities, emphasising that declining interest rates could make DB liabilities more sensitive to rising life expectancy.

It has also resulted in a slight increase in cohort life expectancies at age 65, which are around one month higher than for CMI 2018, for both male and females.

Commenting on the findings, CMI mortality projections committee chair, Cobus Daneel, said: “Mortality rates in 2019 were at the lowest level we have ever seen in England & Wales.

"It’s important to stress that mortality rates are volatile and, in isolation, the improvement seen in 2019 should not necessarily be interpreted as a return to the high level of improvements that we’ve seen in previous decades".

Raising concerns, Mercer UK head of longevity analytics, Alastair Walker, commented: “As the risks to pension funding associated with improved longevity continue to grow in significance for many schemes, trustees and sponsoring employers need to better understand how improvements in life expectancy will impact them.

“Lower mortality rates in 2019 are raising questions about whether the slowdown in mortality improvements in recent years will continue or whether improvements could start to accelerate again".

“Today’s news shows longevity trends can go both ways and it is worth considering alleviating the risk altogether. Schemes could benefit from better understanding the impact of longevity risk and the routes available to reduce that risk through a full-buy-out or longevity swap.”

The CMI statistics also follow a recent update of the Marmot Review however, which revealed that life expectancy had failed to increase for the first time in more than 100 years, as the past decade saw slower than expected increases.

Furthermore, the report, Marmot Review 10 Years On, revealed a decline in life expectancy amongst the poorest 10 per cent of women, stating that more deprived areas were likely to see shorter life expectancies, and noting a steepening of this social gradient over the past decade.

The CMI figures have echoed this, stating that those aged 65-89, and living in less-deprived areas, have experienced mortality improvements of about 1 per cent a year higher than those in more-deprived areas.

CMI also stated that pension scheme members tend to be from less deprived areas, and therefore may be expected to experience higher mortality improvements than the general population.

Daneel added: ““Not everyone experiences the same level of mortality improvements. In recent years, people living in less deprived areas of England and Wales have experienced higher mortality improvements than those in more deprived areas.

“Whilst our projections model uses data for the general population, it provides a flexible framework that can be adjusted to suit our users’ needs.

"For example, some actuaries may increase initial mortality improvement rates if they expect that pension scheme members or insurance company policyholders, who tend to be from less deprived areas on average, will experience higher mortality improvements than the general population in the short to medium term.”

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