Front-loading of charges on insurance products can impose considerable costs on consumers when policies lapse early. This paper develops a theory of the maturity structure of charges similar to that used to examine the term structure of interest rates, and applies it to the UK experience with...

The UK requires individuals with individual pension accounts to annuitize before the age of 75. Using a time series of annuity prices and quantities, we apply the methodology of Mitchell et. al. (1999) to examine the value of UK market annuity rates relative to theoretical values. We find that...