Excitement in the world of pension annuities. Unexpected, but yes. There has been a dust-up between representatives of the pensions industry and the Government over personal accounts. Then Norwich Union, one of the UK’s biggest pension and annuity providers, announced that it is to introduce postcode-rated annuities, meaning that retirement income will vary depending on where you live. Finally, the Liberal Democrats called for new rules to ensure that everyone shops around for an annuity.

We should applaud the Liberal Democrats for trying to force the Government to address the woeful take-up of the open-market option on annuities. Only 40 per cent of people buy an annuity from a different company to that they have saved with. The result is that they could lose thousands of pounds over the life of their pensions.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 3:30 pm and is filed under Annuity rates, Open market option. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.