When planning for retirement, one of the biggest challenges is making sure your income won’t run out before you do. Most financial tools can help grow your savings — but only one has a built-in advantage when it comes to guaranteed lifetime income: the annuity. The key to that advantage is something called a mortality credit.
What Are Mortality Credits?
Mortality credits are the “extra” income annuity holders receive because they remain alive and in the annuity’s risk pool as time passes. When you invest in an annuity designed for lifetime income, you become part of a group of individuals who’ve done the same thing. Some people in that pool, statistically, will pass away earlier than expected. The funds they contributed but didn’t fully draw out are redistributed to those who continue to live.
That pooling effect is what allows an insurance company to credit survivors with higher payouts than they would otherwise earn on their own. Mortality credits are not an investment return like interest or dividends. They’re made possible by the collective longevity experience of the group — and they only exist inside an insurance contract.
Why No Other Product Can Do This
Traditional investments — mutual funds, stocks, bonds, CDs — rely solely on market growth, interest, or dividends. They can grow your savings, but they won’t supply you with mortality credits. If you spend down all your assets, there’s no secondary mechanism to keep the income flowing. You simply run out.
Annuities, structured through insurance contracts, transform your savings into a shared longevity pool. This allows insurers to effectively redistribute funds from shorter-lived participants to those who live longer — ensuring a guaranteed income stream for as long as you live. No investment advisor can manufacture that. Only a life insurance company can.
The chart below illustrates exactly how this works for a male age 65 with a $100,000 investment. The red portion — what an investment advisor could replicate through systematic withdrawals — declines steadily and eventually reaches zero. The green portion above it represents the mortality credits, growing in significance as the policyholder ages. That green area is what keeps the income flowing at 85, 90, and 100.
How This Translates Into Lifetime Income
When you rely solely on savings and market-based investments, you spend cautiously — never quite certain how long to stretch your resources. With a properly structured annuity, you know exactly what your payments will be and that they won’t stop, no matter how long you live.
The benefit isn’t theoretical. Suppose someone invests in an annuity at age 65 and lives well into their 90s. Over time, mortality credits boost their income beyond what their initial premium and investment returns could have generated alone. The annuity provider manages the collective life expectancies of everyone in the pool, leveraging those credits to keep the income flowing — even when an individual’s own account value would have long since been exhausted.
Tom Hegna, one of the leading voices in retirement income planning, explains this concept clearly in a short video worth watching: Tom Hegna on Mortality Credits (2:50).
The Bottom Line
Annuities use mortality credits to reward those who live longer with continued income — income that no other financial product can replicate. This makes them one of the most powerful tools available for ensuring your retirement income lasts as long as you do. Not the only tool. Not the right tool for every dollar. But for the portion of your savings dedicated to covering everyday expenses in retirement, the math is hard to argue with.
If you’d like to understand how mortality credits could apply to your specific situation — your age, your savings, your retirement timeline — we’re glad to walk through it with you. No pressure, no commitment. Just clarity.
Kurt Lytle is the founder of IUL.Solutions, an independent insurance and retirement income planning practice based in Nashville, TN. All recommendations are made only after a full suitability review in accordance with each state’s insurance regulations. IUL.Solutions does not provide tax, legal, or investment advice. NPN #8993693.