The purpose of this report is very specific: to stimulate debate about the proposal by the UK government to end the mandatory requirement to purchase annuities in pension schemes as formally announced in the Budget Statement on 22 June 2010

This report ‘Ending compulsory annuitisation: Quantifying the consequences' is intended to provide a quantitative assessment of the issues raised in our earlier report. ‘Ending compulsory annuitisation: What are the consequences?' published in July 2010. We also provide policy...

This paper constructs a time series of annuity rates in the U.K. for 1957-2002, and examines the pricing of U.K. annuities, and the relationship between the accumulation and decumulation phases of a defined contribution pension scheme by focusing on the properties of the pension replacement...

We use historical data on investment returns and labour income from sixteen countries to quantify the value and risk of defined contribution pension plans, building frequency distributions of pension fund and pension replacement ratios for each country. We show that pension risk is substantial,...

Using data on historical returns on international financial assets, the paper simulates pension fund and pension replacement ratios, building up frequency distributions of these ratios for individuals saving in a defined contribution pension plan in different countries. These frequency...

This paper describes the operation of both the compulsory pension annuity and voluntary annuity markets in the UK. The paper reports on the movement of UK annuity price quotes in the voluntary market from 1957-2009, and in the pension annuity market from 1994 to 2009, and examines whether...

This chapter describes the operation of both the compulsory pension annuity and voluntary annuity markets in the U.K. and evaluates prices using a money's worth approach. We find that the money's worth was about 0.90 to 2004 but it then fell to about 0.80, although there is uncertainty about the...

The "money's worth" measure has been used to assess whether annuities are fairly valued and also as evidence for adverse selection in the annuity market. However, a regulated life assurer with concerns about predicting long-run mortality may price annuities to reduce these risks which will...

We provide the first analysis of annuity rates in the Netherlands for the period 2001-2012. During this period, the number of annuity providers was high and stable and we find that falls in annuity rates can be explained entirely by changes in yields and life expectancy. We show that annuitants...