Definition
A survivor credit is the amount of capital redistributed to a specific surviving pool member in a given period as a result of the deaths of other members during that period, calculated according to the pool's redistribution rules.
Why it matters
The mortality credit is the aggregate redistribution event — capital flowing from the estate of a deceased member into the pool. The survivor credit is the individual's share of that event: the specific dollar amount a surviving member receives in a given period. Distinguishing the two makes the pooling mechanism legible at the level the individual actually experiences it — not as a pool-level statistic but as a period-by-period income line item.
How it works
Each period, the pool's redistribution rule determines how the assets of members who died during that period are allocated among survivors. A survivor credit is the individual member's allocated share. Under a pro-rata redistribution rule, the survivor credit is proportional to the surviving member's account balance relative to the total pool. Under an equal-share rule, it is divided equally among all survivors regardless of balance. Under an actuarially weighted rule, it is adjusted for age or mortality expectation. Survivor credits are distinct from mortality credits: mortality credit refers to the aggregate redistribution event (the pool-level transfer); survivor credit refers to the individual member's period-specific receipt of that transfer. As the pool contracts over time — with fewer surviving members sharing the redistribution from each death — the survivor credit received by each individual member tends to grow as a percentage of their remaining account, even as the pool's total mortality credit per period may stabilize or decline in absolute terms.
In practice
For an individual participating in a longevity pool, survivor credits appear as the portion of income in excess of what the pool's investment returns alone would generate. Reviewing survivor credits period by period makes the pooling benefit observable rather than theoretical: the individual can see how much of their income in each period comes from investment returns and how much from the redistribution of deceased members' assets. Pools that disclose survivor credits transparently make the mechanism legible; pools that do not make the pooling benefit invisible and harder to evaluate.
In the Longevity Standard Framework
Survivor credit is supporting vocabulary in the Longevity Standard framework. It is the individual-level expression of the mortality credit: while the mortality credit describes the pool-level transfer event, the survivor credit describes what that event produces for a specific surviving member in a specific period. In the cost-of-income framework, the accumulation of survivor credits over a planning horizon is what generates the gap between a surviving member's time-average return and the solo drawdown baseline — the income component that the pooling multiplier captures in aggregate.
Related terms
- Mortality credit
- Mortality-contingent redistribution
- Longevity pool
- Pooling multiplier
- Time-average return (Longevity Standard context)
- Pool governance
- Risk sharing