Annuity customers lose up to £130 million of annual annuity income by not ‘shopping around’

30 September 2021

Retirement Line are very pleased to have co-sponsored with Canada Life important research into the annuity market carried out by the Pensions Policy Institute.

Some key findings from the report include:

• ‘Shopping around’ can increase a person’s income and financial security throughout their retirement. In 2019, up to £130m could have been lost in the first year by people not doing so
• One could gain an extra £7000 per £100,000 in their pension pot over the course of their retirement by ‘shopping around’
• In recent years, approximately half of all lifetime annuity customers did so from their existing pension provider.

Retirement Line is a whole of market annuity intermediary, meaning we do the ‘shopping around’ for our customers. For the calendar year 2020, the average difference between the lowest and highest conventional annuity quotations offered to our enquirers was 10%, equating to £413 a year.

In addition to this, in 2020, nearly 9 in 10 of all our lifetime annuity customers qualified for an ‘enhanced annuity’ meaning they received on average 12% more yearly annuity income than the highest conventional annuity quotation being offered.

If you wish to download a copy of the PPI briefing note in full, you can do so by clicking here.