Displaying items by tag: pensions

The Chancellor could introduce a limit to the tax-free lump sums taken from pensions, cut the pension annual allowance, and tax pensions when left to descendants to raise cash in the Autumn Budget.

HMRC has reported that £2.3bn was withdrawn from pensions flexibly in Q2 - a 17% fall year-on-year from the £2.8 billion seen in Q2 2019.

A nudge from a pension provider drove three times as many savers to seek guidance during research by the Money and Pensions Service.

Single male pensioners receive up to 26% more income than single female pensioners, according to a report using data complied from the Office for National Statistics.

MPs have urged the Pensions Regulator to help employees who do opt-out due to financial difficulties during the pandemic to re-enrol than would happen normally under auto-enrolment.

Almost 9 in 10 of eligible employees (88%, 19.2m people) have saved for retirement through their workplace pension: an increase from 55% in 2012 when automatic-enrolment began, DWP figures have said.

However, pension participation among self-employed people continued to fall from 21% in 2009/10 to 14% in 2018/19.

The annual total amount saved for eligible employees was £98.4bn in 2019, an increase of £5.3bn from 2018.

£40.5bn was saved into public sector schemes (41%), with £57.9bn (59%) saved into private sector schemes.DWP data from December 2019 showed 5.44m people were employed in the public sector (16%) compared to 27.55m (84%) people in the private sector.

Following the release of the data, Hargreaves Lansdown shared concerns about the pension savings figures for the self-employed.

Nathan Long, interim head of policy at Hargreaves Lansdown said: “The self-employed continue to be precariously placed with just a handful choosing to save into a pension, showing the existing incentives just don’t resonate. The Government will also be acutely aware that 41% of all pension contributions go to public sector employees that represent less than a fifth of all workers.”

The Pensions Regulator has so far issued 115,459 auto-enrolment fixed penalty notices since the start of the workplace pension scheme in 2012.

Defined benefit transfer values rose nearly 4% during May with the number of members taking a transfer value also increasing from the record low observed in April.

Barnett Waddingham has warned that there are likely to be too few advisers to meet demand from the 120,000 pension savers a year it predicts will need DB transfer advice.

A record 1m more people will reach the Pension Freedom age of 55 his year and this ‘peak’ will last for several years, according to new analysis.