SSs also have their uses as vehicles to speculate on mortality risk. Suppose a firm has a
view that prospective future mortality is likely to be considerably less than is currently
widely believed. The firm might be an insurance company whose in-house research
indicated that mortality improvements would be greater than expected. The firm
could exploit its beliefs about future mortality by entering into SSs as the preset-rate
payer. If its views were correct, mortality would subsequently fall, and the payments
it would receive on the floating-rate leg of the swap would rise. Furthermore, the firm
would not necessarily have to wait until its prediction turned out to be correct to reap
the benefit: as soon as market expectations of future mortality fell into line with its
own view, the market values of SSs would be revised, and the firm would profit from
the capital gain on its swap.