The government has scrapped its plans to allow pensioners to sell their annuity in return for a cash lump sum due to a lack of potential buyers and concerns over consumer protections.
The contentious plan for a secondary market in annuities was first mooted by the government in March 2015 as a way to give more freedom to pensioners locked into low-value annuity deals. But critics argued that assessing the cash value of complicated annuity products would be difficult and said buyers would be hard to find.
Now the government has rowed back on its plans, concluding that “the consumer protections required could undermine the market’s development” and that “there will be insufficient purchasers to create a competitive market”.