FAQ
1.What Makes Club Vita Different?
In the world of pensions Club Vita offers its members several genuine firsts:
  • Club Vita recognises the uncertainty of changing longevity as one of the most significant risks affecting pension schemes. The introduction of annual monitoring of longevity risk is a genuine break from tradition for many pension schemes. By adopting the VitaCycle you are provided with annual monitoring of the emerging survival experience from your own scheme and the rest of Club Vita’s extensive database. Compare this with your current longevity assumptions and it will enable you to review the adequacy of your reserve for future improvement and help you to avoid costly surprises.
  • The volume and richness of data, the number of schemes in one dataset and the depth of history stretching back 15 years make VitaBank the richest pool of occupational pension data ever collected.
  • We analyse only occupational pension data (the data which is most relevant to your scheme) and combine this with other socio-economic and lifestyle data to gain a rich picture of pensioner longevity across all schemes.
  • Traditionally actuaries look at a few factors that may influence longevity. Club Vita considers a whole range of interrelated factors such as postcode groups, salary and age at retirement, as well as type of retirement. And analysis takes into account the interactions of the different factors and tailors survival rates to the specific ‘DNA’ of your scheme. We also pick out the factors that relate best to your scheme by comparing your experience with other schemes with similar characteristics.
2.How does this differ to what my scheme actuary does?
Club Vita provides a specialist longevity analytics and knowledge sharing service. It does not offer advice nor replace your scheme actuary but rather supports them with new insights. Club Vita’s analysis provides you with a detailed picture of your scheme’s actual survival patterns and benchmarks your own experience against that of your peers.
 
This also helps your actuary advise you on the adequacy of your reserves for future longevity improvements and make adjustments sooner than is possible today. Advice should still be sought from your actuary.
3.What are the advantages of joining the club?
Recent events and turmoil in the markets demonstrate the need to understand the risks inherent in your scheme. In fact, longevity is one of the biggest unknowns for many pension schemes, especially those that have eliminated investment risk.
 
Our forward-looking research is uncovering new and significant insights that are increasing our understanding of changing longevity patterns. It helps us understand the possible future impact of medical advances and changing lifestyles on occupational pension schemes. Only Club members will gain access to this breakthrough in understanding.
4.How significant is longevity to pension schemes?
Understanding the impact of longevity is fast becoming the single most important issue facing trustees and sponsors. For schemes that have not hedged their investment strategy or adopted a liability driven investment strategy, after investment risk longevity is the number one risk facing pension trustees and sponsors.
 
For example, a one-year increase in life expectancy for a pension scheme with £1bn of liabilities would require around £30m more in the fund.
5.Why monitor changes to longevity annually?
It is not unusual for trustees and their scheme actuaries to leave it three years between reviewing the impact of changing longevity on their scheme. The step change that results is often greater than expected, given that traditional mortality tables are updated infrequently.
 
By reviewing their scheme’s longevity landscape annually, trustees and sponsors can manage the change with a great deal more certainty, replacing old statistics and subjective opinions with hard facts and demonstrate a modern, transparent approach toward funding. Annual reviews highlight early warnings that may affect your scheme, equipping you to address them quickly and effectively.
6.How does the club structure work?
Club Vita brings trustees and sponsors of large occupational pension schemes together in a new community, pooling their longevity experience for their mutual benefit. It operates on a simple subscription basis and is open to schemes with at least 1000 pensioners. Subscription rates are set at a level that enables it to provide a leading edge suite of products to help you monitor longevity within your scheme.
 
Any operating surplus from these subscriptions is reinvested into Club Vita, to commission new research into longevity for the benefit of members.
 
Members join on standard terms and conditions, established for the benefit of all. In the spirit of a club all members are treated equally.
7.Who is Club Vita?
Club Vita LLP is being established by Hymans Robertson LLP, the UK’s leading independent expert in pensions and benefits advice. Because Hymans Robertson believes in the importance of closing the gap of knowledge and improving our understanding of occupational pension longevity, it provided Club Vita with its longevity analysis systems and access to £1m of initial working capital.
 
Club Vita uses Hymans Robertson’s team of highly qualified statisticians, database architects, analysts and longevity consultants to perform the data analysis for members. Club Vita LLP is a separate company, operating under the direction of an independent supervisory board, chaired by Peter Thompson, the former chairman of the National Association of Pension Funds. The diverse board is made up of experts drawn from the fields of pensions, ageing and medical research.
8.What services are on offer?
Once we have your scheme data, we will provide you with an insight into the quality of your data, VitaCleansing. We can establish how complete your records are and how far back in time your data is reliable for analysis.
 
Next you will receive a benchmarking report, VitaIndex, which not only compares the longevity experience of your scheme with that of other members, but also identifies your own specific mix of longevity characteristics (your scheme’s ‘DNA’).
 
You will also receive an annual baseline assumption reflecting the specific characteristics of both your current and future pensioners, VitaCurves. Uniquely these assumptions reflect the most significant predictors of pensioner longevity and are tailored to your scheme.
 
An annual monitoring service, VitaMonitor, is part of the membership service. VitaMonitor reports on your scheme’s actual experience of the survival rates of your pensioners, and whether this differs from your assumptions. Your experience is also contrasted with those of other Club members to help you understand whether it is in line with a wider trend or a blip.
 
Club Vita will also provide you with regular news and information relating to its research work, and will organise events exclusively for Club members. Guest speakers are expected to join us from the related worlds of medicine and gerontology.
9.What do you need from me?
All that we need is scheme data relating to your current and future pensioners. We will collect this data once a year at a time that suits you. In the first year we will help your administrator extract the data from your administration systems in a format agreed with Club Vita.
 
We have considerable experience in extracting data from a wide range of popular pensions administration systems and work with many of the main pension administrator suppliers.
 
The data we collect includes personal identifiers, needed to validate the quality of the data and ensure pensioners are not double counted within different schemes and skew the results.
10.How can I be assured that our members' data is safe?
At Club Vita we take data security very seriously. We have a stringent data security policy in place that is reviewed regularly against industry best practice. Our policy includes:
  • Personal data collected on both living and deceased scheme members is treated with the utmost care and sensitivity.
  • Personal data identifiers are stored separately from the rest of the data items. Data is always anonymised in this way before analysis is undertaken.
  • All access to data is strictly restricted through a combination of physical security measures and through access controls given only to those who analyse and interpret data.
  • All data processing is performed on Hymans Robertson’s systems. Data is not passed to or processed by other third parties.