Savers have accessed a total of £9.2bn through pension freedoms since the reforms were announced, with around £1.6bn taken from pension pots in the last three months.
Figures published by HM Revenue & Customs show a total of 516,000 payments were made from pension pots between April 2015 and March 2016, and over one million payments were made between April 2016 and the end of last year.
The number of individuals accessing their pension on a quarterly basis has almost doubled from 84,000 in the three months to June 2015 to 162,000 as at the end of 2016.
The data from HMRC covers “flexible payments” from pensions, which include full or partial withdrawals, flexible drawdown and buying a flexible annuity.
The Treasury says guidance service Pension Wise has had over 3.7 million visits to the website and carried out over 100,000 appointments since pension freedoms was introduced in April 2015.
Treasury economic secretary Simon Kirby says: “Giving people freedom over what they do with their hard-earned savings, whether it’s buying an annuity or taking a cash lump sum, is the right thing to do.
Tags: pension freedoms
This entry was posted by John on Wednesday, January 25th, 2017 at 12:10 pm and is filed under Pension news.
