Longer life expectancy and the pressure it is putting on the GCC region's pension funds will be among the issues discussed at a major regional conference.

The conference on the Challenges Facing the GCC Social Insurance and Pension Funds, which will be held on September 19 and 20, will look at ways to better deal with a larger elderly population.

"The actuary studies that we had previously relied on failed to accurately predict the growth in the number of beneficiaries that the funds have to support," said General Organisation for Social Insurance (Gosi) public relations assistant director Faisal Al Ainati

"In the 1970s the statistics showed the average life expectancy was only around 60, now it's around the early 70s."

Mr Al Ainati said this was an issue that had to be addressed by Gosi, the Pension Fund Commission (PFC) and other organisations across the region.

"It's not that we don't want people to live longer. Of course, we are delighted medicine and health care has improved, working conditions are better and people are living to a ripe old age," he said.

"But the pension funds were not structured to handle this amount of demand on its resources and solutions will need to be found." 

He said possible solutions could include finding ways of improving return on investment. 

The conference, which will be held at the Diplomat Radisson SAS, is being organised by Gosi and the PFC, with participants coming from across the region.

It was announced at a Press conference held at the PFC's premises in the Diplomatic Area yesterday.

Mr Al Ainati said the conference would also discuss many other technical issues.

"We will look at ways to improve our relationship with subscribers," he said. "Many pension funds are not close to the people that they serve and perhaps this can be improved through utilisation of better technology."

PFC subscriber relations acting director Ahlam Rajab said each fund could look at the strengths and weaknesses of others in the region and learn from them.

Mr Al Ainati added that one of the things Bahrain's two pension funds had which was unique in the region and possibly the world was three per cent annual increment.

"A lot of people said we were being adventurous when we introduced this system," he said. "We believe we are the only funds in the world which have such a thing in place."