When the Society of Actuaries (SOA) released the RP-2014 mortality table in 2014, they included mortality improvement scale MP-2014.  The purpose of this scale is to reflect mortality improvement into the future, since one would expect future mortality rates to be lower with further advances in health and medicine. A practice was then started to update this improvement scale annually as additional years of Social Security Administration mortality experience became available.

On October 27, 2021, the SOA released the latest mortality improvement scale: MP-2021. The release can be found here. This scale reflects historical U.S. population mortality experience through 2019.

Whereas the past five updates to the improvement scale have seen steady decreases to plan liabilities, generally in the 0.5% to 1.0% per year range, MP-2021 is anticipated to increase liabilities between 0.2% to 0.4%.  No adjustments have been made to MP-2021 to account for pandemic effects.

The MP-2021 improvement scale is final and can be used for valuations from this point forward.  Feel free to reach out to your Foster & Foster consultant with any questions you may have.