Here’s a new one; the size of your waistline could dictate the size of your pension annuity payout if plans from Legal & General, Britain’s biggest annuity provider, come to fruition. It is putting the finishing touches to a pilot scheme to be launched in September in which a person’s occupation and body mass index could be used to determine how long a pension holder is likely to live and the resulting payout.

Until L&G’s recent moves on postcode rating and now this, standard annuity rates were usually only based on the age and sex of an individual, so those with lower life expectancy in effect cross-subsidised the payouts of healthier people.

So, what to do? Stop the gym membership, eat more, and move to Glasgow.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 8:28 am and is filed under Annuity rates, General, Ill health, Open market option. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.