Living longer, not worrying longer: How I make my mark at SCOR

From a chemistry lab in Chicago to leading conversations on retirement security, Matt Collins has built a career around turning complexity into a decision someone can act on. Today, he leads SCOR's global longevity business. His team safeguards nearly 20 billion dollars in retirement savings. For Matt, retirement should be about living longer, not worrying longer.

Where it all begins: taking things apart to understand them

Matt grew up in Wolverhampton in the UK. He describes the town, with a smile, as "an excellent place to grow up but often a long way from the center of things” it gave him a strong sense of family and belonging but a drive to explore further.

As a child, he took apart anything he could get his hands on, not always managing to put it back together. At school, science became his way of making sense of the world. He chose chemistry over physics for a simple reason: he wanted to make things that explode. But what stayed with him wasn't the fireworks. It was the discipline of building a model to explain something complex and knowing that a model is only as good as the question you ask of it.

From a molecule in Chicago to a model for life expectancy

A year working in a medical lab in Chicago changed his direction. He tried to manufacture a molecule for treating osteoporosis. He failed often, until he found a way to produce a version pure enough, and scalable enough, to test in the real world. However, he found that pure academic chemistry felt too abstract and brought that same feeling of distance he was trying to get away from. He wanted work that combined logic with real consequences, so he became an actuary and spent several years in pensions consulting.

There, a surprise awaited him. A man who always thought he was more comfortable with formulas than with words discovered that his real strength was communication: explaining not just what a model could reveal about pensions, but especially what it couldn't. He also learned the limits of consulting: A consultant influences decisions. He never owns them.

Giving people confidence in a longer life

That desire to own an outcome is what brought Matt to SCOR and to longevity risk. The field sits where his two worlds meet: selling a product that solves a problem and modelling how long people will live.

We're living longer than ever before, and that changes how people think about retirement and financial security. By transferring longevity risk away from insurers, Matt and his team help give people a guaranteed income for life, however long that life turns out to be. He leads his team less like a technical expert and more like a conductor: he doesn't play every instrument, but he keeps the team in sync and focuses on the markets where the work matters most.

Fair access, one policy at a time

Ask Matt for the clearest example of his impact, and he points to medical underwriting. It lets people in poorer health, who might otherwise see a retirement income product as poor value for them, access one that is priced fairly for their situation. It's one of the parts of the job he enjoys most, because it turns an abstract risk model into something that gives greater access to financial security.

Today, that work covers billions in present value of claims in the UK alone. Across the whole portfolio, his team safeguards nearly 20 billion dollars of people's retirement savings. And the need keeps growing as populations from Europe to China are ageing, and people are facing complex retirement decisions well into their 80s and 90s.

What comes next, from schemes to people

What keeps Matt engaged is what has always driven him: taking something complex and explaining it clearly enough that someone, whether a technical expert or a decision-maker with none of that expertise, can act on it. "You can't just present facts," he says. "You have to have a view."

He expects the longevity market to shift, over the next five to ten years, from large pension-scheme transactions toward helping individuals make better decisions about their own retirement income. His path is a fitting illustration of that shift: making sense of complexity, so that someone, somewhere, gets to retire with confidence, not worry.