Fat jabs are perhaps the largest development in healthcare since statins. Weight-loss drugs – or GLP-1s, as they’re properly known – will reduce the number of people having heart attacks, developing diabetes or getting cancer, and will generally let people live longer. With a population that’s two-thirds overweight or obese, it’s no surprise that already three million British adults are on the jabs. That’s twice as many as last year and the number is expected to double again by the end of 2027, according to consultants at PwC. Reinsurers such as Swiss Re say that weight-loss drugs could decrease all-cause UK mortality by as much as 5 per cent over the next 20 years. A health miracle, then. But one underexplored consequence is: what will it mean for pension providers if more people are unexpectedly living longer?

For those of us on defined contribution schemes, it is not really a problem: we have our pot of money, and that’s that. But for defined benefit (DB) schemes, which promise a set return until you die, it is worrying. The question nobody has quite answered is exactly how much that longer life is going to cost and who is going to pay for it. A rule of thumb is that every year of added life expectancy adds around 3 per cent to a DB scheme’s liabilities. Insurers have been watching for a while. Jeff Davies, Legal & General’s former finance director, said last........

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