a) overcharging you for covering the risk of you dying too early (death insurance is marketed as 'life' insurance)
b) overcharging you for covering the risk of you living so long that you run out of money (fixed annuities).
Disclosure: I am the founder of https://tontine.com which will shortly launch a lifetime income solution that will reward you for living longer and we are hiring.
If customers are living longer, our algo's slows down the capital payouts which means that we earn fees on more assets for longer.
Therefore it makes commercial sense for us to give customers tips to help them live longer.
For example, I just found this today: https://academic.oup.com/ageing/article/51/5/afac080/6572254...
Looking at other insurance, naming after the thing insured (auto insurance, life insurance, motorcycle insurance) is pretty common, as is naming after the class of people who might want it (homeowner’s insurance, renter’s insurance) and the source/cause/type of loss insured against (flood insurance, malpractice insurance).
I don't think any of those is more fundamentally “correct”, and they are all marketing tools.
Secondly, the trust is managed by a board of trustees that have a fiduciary duty to look after the best interests of members rather than the best interest of shareholders.
When the next crash of 2008 scale or worse occurs, would you prefer to be a general creditor of an insurer (which has a debt to equity ratio of ~12:1) or would you prefer to be a beneficiary of trust with no debt which manages assets like the Harvard or Yale endowments whilst being legally obliged to look after your best interest?
How does it work say if I die before starting to take a monthly sum? Say I want to retire at 65 but I die at 40. I wouldn't get anything in that case.
So the first hurdle to overcome is to actually reach retirement age? I guess pensions work the same way, we pay into a pension and if I die before retirement, goodbye pension.
How are monthly amounts calculated? Is it, the more I put in the more I can get out monthly when I retire? Do I get paid more monthly as I get older because we're assuming more people in my "pool" have passed away?
If I stop contributing after some time before I retire, do I still get a pension?