Ask Martin Lewis for expert money saving tips
The consumer champion and founder of moneysavingexpert.com is being interviewed by the Guardian. But you can ask him your own questions
Times are hard, we know. The bills keep growing, the pay packets don't. And the banks, energy suppliers, supermarkets and mobile phone operators aren't, on the whole, getting any kinder.
So next week I'm interviewing Martin Lewis, consumer champion, on the occasion of his official coronation as King of the British High Street: the individual who exercises the most influence on how British consumers spend their money. It's the first time the award, bestowed every year by the Grocer magazine, has been won by someone who doesn't head a retail giant; Lewis, whose moneysavingexpert.com website is followed by 7 million consumers, beat the CEOs of Tesco, Diageo, Asda, Morrison's, Sainsbury's and Waitrose.
Lewis has fought a fair few battles on our behalf since launching in 2003 and there's a lot I want to ask him. But there are probably things you'd like to ask him too. So here's your chance: email g2feedback@guardian.co.uk with "money" in the subject line, or post a comment below, and I promise (as far as I can) to pose them.
• This article was amended on 9 June 2011: the original header incorrectly described Martin Lewis as giving financial "advice". He gives money saving tips from an independent perspective.
Financial advisersPersonal loansBorrowing & debtPersonal pensionsPensionsFamily financesJon Henleyguardian.co.ukNext U-turn: changes to pensions provision for women, please
A quick rethink of the changes to pension age is needed if the 300,000 women directly affected are going to get a fair deal
Is there a limit on the number of U-turns a government can spin? I hope not as there's one issue that needs a change of heart pretty sharpish. It isn't sexy, like some of the issues prompting women to march in protest over newspaper front pages, but it's just as important, probably more so for the 300,000 women directly affected.
Changes in pension provision, an issue that's never going to provide the sort of media-friendly pictures of a Playboy protest, say, or sluts, whether walking or otherwise, smacks of injustice just the same. Strangely enough, the changes were introduced in the name of equality: why should women retire earlier than men? They live longer and can make the same useful contribution to the economy, so why bundle them into the Post Office to pick up their pensions any earlier?
The problem is that this government speeded up the bid for equality in a way that leaves a group of women just seven years away from retirement suddenly facing two more years without any pension whatsoever. Yes, this coalition makes a change in name of equality that unfairly impacts women – who'd have thought it?
Anyway, if you happen to be a woman born between December 1953 and October 1954, you have to wait an extra 18 months or more to get the state pension and face retirement at 66 in 2018, rather than 64. Such sudden changes in pension policies – I know seven years seems like an age to most of us, particularly journalists, but it isn't for the tectonic calculations done for retirement – contravenes advice given by the landmark Turner report on pensions, which recommended at least 15 years to make changes. The shadow Labour pensions minister has been inundated with women explaining why their personal circumstances – elderly relatives, care for grandchildren, fewer jobs – makes suddenly trying to earn a shed-load of money in the next few years a bit tricky.
Even members of the coalition are starting to feel uneasy about this change. As my colleague, Polly Curtis, revealed, Lib Dems and even some Tories are thinking of staging a rebellion with 19 of the former – a third of the parliamentary party – among 161 MPs who have already signed a motion opposing the plans because they discriminate against women.
None of them voted against the government on the opposition day motion brought by Labour yesterday on the impact the coalition cuts are having on women. A vote that "government policies are hitting women and families hardest" with tax and benefit changes, cuts to childcare support and Sure Start, as well as reductions in domestic and sexual violence specialist support – would seem too much like betrayal, presumably, for junior coalition partners seemingly determined to hang on for another four years.
But David Cameron himself, asked twice in prime minister's questions whether he would change his mind on the issue, gave some grounds for hope. It may be that with all the fuss over the U-turn on criminal justice – rapists won't get their sentences halved for pleading guilty – the Tories are feeling a little bit bruised and, frankly, a small little bend in the direction of travel could be done more quietly a few weeks down the line. In just over a week's time the pensions bill is expected to be debated again before going into committee.
From Monday, I'll be on jury service for two weeks. Some of my fabulous colleagues will, I hope, be filling in on this blog in the meantime. But, by the time I get back, I hope to be celebrating another U-turn and not that Cameron wants to ape our only female prime minister. Let's hope this man is still for turning.
WomenPensionsRetirement ageSlutWalksLiberal-Conservative coalitionDavid CameronJane Martinsonguardian.co.ukYoung people leave saving for pension too late, report warns
Faced with job insecurity and less generous pension schemes, twentysomethings risk failing to be able to pay for their future
Peter Pan syndrome combined with the closure of final salary pension schemes and the disappearance of the "job for life" culture have put young people at risk of a financially unsustainable future.
A report by the International Longevity Centre – UK says that although increasing longevity means the need to save for retirement is greater than ever, the lengthening transition between adolescence and adulthood means young people are putting off saving for retirement.
In the past, people would start contributing to a pension as soon as they started work, often in their teens. But Dr Craig Berry, senior researcher at the ILC and author of the report Resuscitating Retirement Saving: How to Help Today's Young People Plan for Later Life, said young people now value living for today, appear to spend a higher proportion of their income than other age groups, and are often in their thirties before they start thinking about contributing to a pension.
This may be partly because of spending longer in education, but also because young people tend to spend several years in part-time or temporary jobs before starting more permanent employment, while the industries that used to be the route into occupational pensions have either closed down or no longer offer such attractive pension schemes.
Berry added that today's young people "tend to favour investing in housing rather than planning for retirement, although housing pathways are often chaotic, especially for those not able to rely on financial support from older relatives".
Bradley Tubb, a 25-year-old PR executive living in London, was talked through his employer's pension scheme on joining the firm three years ago, but has decided not to do so until he is 27, or 30 at the latest. "I want to be earning £27,000 before I start contributing to a pension," he said. "I pay £600 a month in rent, £320 a month on going out and £106 on transport plus other bills. I have paid off my overdraft and I want to build up some savings and a deposit for my own home before I start thinking about pensions."
Many 20-year-olds may also be deterred by the huge amounts they need to save to generate a decent pension. Tubb would like to retire on a pension income of about £25,000 in today's terms, including the £7,500 state pension. To achieve that he will need to save £430 a month (including his employer's contributions and tax relief) from the age of 30 to 68 (the state pension age he would have to work to under current legislation), according to independent financial advisers Hargreaves Lansdown. Even if he started now he would need to save £345 a month.
Nearly half the working population are not saving enough for retirement, and a fifth are failing to save anything at all, according to latest research published by Scottish Widows.
This found that although people want, on average, an annual retirement income of £24,300 to live comfortably, only 51% save adequately for their old age. This drops to about 25% when those with a final salary pension are excluded.
Berry recommends the promotion of a savings rule of thumb similar to the "five-a-day" healthy eating message: "Planning for retirement may be an alien concept for many young people, but delayed transitions to adulthood in terms of owning a home, establishing a career and starting a family mean that young people need to start saving for a pension now. I don't want to demonise young people for being reckless, but it has got to be more normal for people to start saving into pensions."
Although the government has abolished the default retirement age and increased the state pension age to increase working lives and reduce the period of time pensioners spend in retirement, the report said "it is unlikely (and probably undesirable) that retirement ages will increase in proportion to the postponement of adulthood".
PensionsRetirement planningSavingsOccupational pensionsState pensionsFamily financesJill Insleyguardian.co.ukLiberal Democrat revolt over plan to raise women’s pension age
Seventeen Lib Dems among 161 MPs who have signed motion opposing fast-track pension age rise for 330,000 women
The coalition is facing a growing rebellion from Liberal Democrat backbenchers over a plan to change the pension age, which they say discriminates against women.
A number of Tory MPs have also spoken out against the plans, which will fast-track raising the pension age to 66, giving 300,000 women born in 1955 and 1956 just seven years' notice that they will have to wait up to two years longer to collect their state pension.
Labour will raise the matter in a Commons debate on Wednesday in which MPs will vote on a motion claiming the government has broken a coalition commitment not to start raising the retirement age to 66 sooner than 2020. The reforms, contained in a bill due back in the Commons within weeks, would kick in from 2018.
Seventeen Lib Dems are among 161 MPs who have signed an early-day motion opposing the changes. They include former party leader Charles Kennedy, John Hemming and Annette Brooke. MPs have been inundated with letters of complaint from constituents caught up in the change.
Government sources said the Lib Dem pensions minister, Steve Webb, has been "lobbied incredibly hard" by backbenchers. Jenny Willott, the Lib Dem backbench spokeswoman on pensions, has also called for the plans to be reconsidered.
Two Tory MPs, Peter Bottomley and James Gray, have signed the motion, and a third, Chloe Smith, told her local newspaper this week she was lobbying for the rules to be amended. "I'm pressing ministers on this because a number of women have raised it with me, and it so happens that members of my own family are in this group. It's certainly an issue I sympathise with greatly. It's not a matter for party politics," she said.
Rachel Reeves, the shadow pensions minister, said the Lib Dems could show their "muscular liberalism" in the coalition by opposing the issue. "This policy is profoundly and arbitrarily unfair on a group of women who have had to face uncertainty over their retirement age too many times," she said.
The debate on Wednesday will focus on the impact of all coalition policies on women, amid claims that they have been unfairly affected.
Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary and women's minister, will claim the government is routinely ignoring the results of its own equality impact assessments when they warn of a disproportional effect on women. There is concern that the communities secretary, Eric Pickles, will secure a power in the localism bill to exempt local authorities and public bodies from conducting such assessments.
Labour is working with the University of Warwick to design a system of do-it-yourself equality impact assessments for local groups to conduct in their communities. The university carried out a study in Coventry and found that women were being comprehensively more harshly affected by the cuts.
Cooper said the coalition was turning back the clock for women. "That's why I'm calling on the minister for women to seriously assess the impact of policies on women – to make sure that gender inequality does not widen," she said.
A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions said it would not back down on pension reforms: "The bill is going through as it is. We're currently waiting for a date on the second reading."
Liberal DemocratsPensionsLiberal-Conservative coalitionWomenPolly Curtisguardian.co.ukHalf of UK not saving enough for retirement, says study
Only 51% of British workers are saving adequately for old age, according to the latest annual Scottish Widows pension report
Nearly half the working population are not saving enough for retirement, and one fifth are failing to save anything at all, according to a major study on pensions.
People want, on average, an annual retirement income of £24,300 to live comfortably, down from the pre-recession figure of £27,900. Although three-quarters of those questioned understand the need to take personal responsibility for their future, only 51% save adequately for their old age. This drops to around 25% when those with a final salary pension are excluded.
The seventh annual Scottish Widows UK pension report, based on interviews with 5,200 adults, shows there is "widespread and ingrained inertia" across the country, with savings levels remaining broadly consistent during the past five years, regardless of the economic downturn.
The Scottish Widows average savings ratio – which tracks the percentage of income being saved for retirement by UK workers not expecting to get their main retirement income from a final salary pension – remains at just over 9%. This is a 3% shortfall on the 12% the insurer believes people should be saving to achieve a comfortable retirement.
Despite recent moves to abolish the default retirement age (the minimum age at which employers could force staff to retire) and raise the state pension age, the average age people would like to retire at remains the same as last year at 61 years and eight months. Only one in five said they would be happy to carry on working until the age of 70.
Ian Naismith of Scottish Widows said: "Put simply, people need to save an extra £58 per month on average to prepare adequately for retirement and make up the shortfall we are seeing currently. That is roughly the cost of a cup of coffee every day.
"Even though for many this is realistic, and is in under the average £97.10 per month people say they can afford, we appreciate the difficulty in setting aside extra money. It's about breaking through that inertia. And for some the amount that needs to be saved will be higher but it's about taking small steps, getting on to the savings ladder and, more importantly, staying on it. Much higher saving levels are needed to get towards the average £24,300 a year people aspire to. The message is that everyone should be putting aside as much as they can afford for their retirement."
Tom McPhail, pension expert with independent financial adviser Hargreaves Lansdown said that according to Office for National Statistics figures, the average pension savings of people retiring between the ages of 50 to 64 last year was £91,900, enough to produce an annual income of about £3,500 to £4,000 depending on your sex and the type of annuity you buy.
"To produce an income of about £24,000, you would need a pension pot of about £400,000 once the state pension has been taken into account," he said. "People today face a very simple choice: to save more, retire later, or live on less in retirement."
PensionsSavingsConsumer affairsRetirement ageJill Insleyguardian.co.ukAre GPs on £100,000 underpaid?
The pension reforms and a reduction of tax relief means an average GP may take home less than £40,000 a year
It is conventional wisdom in Britain that family doctors are rolling in it. GPs, critics say, hoodwinked negotiators into awarding them a madly generous settlement that not only took their pay well above £100,000 a year – the highest in Europe – but also meant they reduced their out-of-hours services.
Last year there was outrage following reports of a doctor in west London who declared annual NHS earnings of £507,241. Another, who ran two surgeries in Birmingham, is said to have earned more than £1m over two years.
NHS reforms could even see another giant leap in GP pay, to as much as £300,000 a year on average, according to research commissioned by the Guardian earlier this year. Coming at a time of deep spending cuts and austerity, such pay levels – double the prime minister's salary – would spark widespread condemnation.
But answer this question. Let's take a GP on £110,000 – just above the current average. That's a lot of money by anybody's standards. How much, after forthcoming pension reforms, will he or she actually take home after tax? Take a guess: £70,000? £65,000?
The figure – and I know this is difficult to believe – could go below £40,000. A decent sum, still, but maybe not exactly rolling in it.
Now it's not as if doctors have a special tax rate, although because the personal allowance is clawed back on earnings above £100,000, there's an effective marginal rate of 61.5% on pay between £100,000 and £113,000 which is affecting many GPs.
Currently a doctor on £110,000 takes home about £58,000, according to accountant Deborah Wood of Moore and Smalley. But what's really about to bite is new pension contributions.
If, like me, you are an employee, contributions come out of your pay – typically 5%-10%. But most GPs are self-employed. That means they in effect have to pay both sides of the equation – the employer's and the employee's contributions. All public sector employees face rises in the amount they are required to contribute, averaging 3% of salary, but higher earners will be expected to pay a lot more.
In the case of GPs, the figures are eye-watering. Their total pension deductions could rise to as much as 29.5% of pay. What's more, something called the "lifetime allowance" which caps tax relief on pensions, is being reduced and that will hit GPs, too.
The poor things, you might argue. They're still going to get a flippin' ginormous pension. This column is hardly going to argue for a big pay increase for those on £110,000 a year. But I'd certainly argue for 10 highly qualified GPs costing the public purse £1.1m, rather than one banker with a £1m bonus underwritten by the taxpayer.
What this does throw into sharp relief is the true cost of pensions for those on high incomes, as highlighted in the recent Hutton report. It doesn't cost much to fund a £3,500-a-year pension for a hospital orderly who retires at 65 and dies at 75. But a £60,000 pension for a GP, who retires at, say, 62, and lives to 90, is colossally expensive.
This is a thorny one. Maybe the only real solution is for GPs to accept, like the rest of us, that a 25-year retirement on a juicy pension is just not going to happen. They must be kicking themselves for doing so much to keep the rest of us alive for so long.
PayWork & careersPensionsGPsHealthNHSDoctorsPatrick Collinsonguardian.co.ukEndowments: keep or cash in, that is the question
Many with-profits endowment plans are earning little or nothing. The gamble is whether to stay, surrender or leave alone
More than a decade ago, Guardian Money led the way with a warning that with-profits endowments were going to be a disaster. Endowments were sold to homebuyers as a way of paying back a mortgage, with a bonus promised on top. But while they paid big commissions to advisers, banks and insurance companies, many left customers with the prospect of serious shortfalls when it came to paying off their mortgage.
Today, billions of pounds remain in with-profits funds, and not just to cover mortgages. The funds feature in savings plans and pension schemes as well, but many now earn nothing from year to year – despite holders paying in each month. With-profits funds were also massively sold to older people as lump sum bonds, leaving millions of savers with an investment whose average return, according to financial group Skandia, is under 1% a year.
What should you do if you have a with-profits policy? Cash it in, or keep paying? Our guide to with-profits tells you all you need to know.
What is a with-profits endowment?It is a complex cocktail of two opaque financial products. The endowment is the regular savings plan, while the "with-profits" bit is simply the mix of investments the money goes into. Endowments were mainly sold as 25-year plans that promised to pay off a home loan and give the holder a "tax-free" lump sum profit as well. Each monthly payment is identical. In the early 1990s, more than three-quarters of mortgages were endowment-based. But endowments were also sold to savers – typically for 10 years.
They appealed to savers fearful of stock market volatility. The supposedly low-risk concept behind with-profits, known as "smoothing", involved insurance company actuaries holding back some investment gains in good years to hand them out in poor years.
But that was not all. When the policy matured, there would be a "terminal" bonus. This was not guaranteed but was, buyers were told, based on the overall investment experience over the life of the policy.
What went wrong?Almost everything. Over-optimistic assumptions about investment growth and high commissions were the nub of the problem. Some companies projected investment growth at 12% a year. High projections allowed salespeople to quote low premiums on endowments, making them appear cheaper than traditional repayment mortgages – and earning themselves commission of up to £1,000 a policy.
But those projections became untenable as the stock market stalled and interest rates fell. Endowment companies were forced to tell customers that their policies were unlikely to pay off their mortgage, and issued "amber" and "red" warning letters.
Where are we now?Throughout the 1990s, Standard Life was reporting that someone who had taken out an endowment 25 years earlier, paying in £50 a month, was getting a bumper payout of at least £100,000. These figures tempted many into taking out an endowment. But the last decade has seen a calamitous fall in payouts. By 2004, Standard Life's payouts had dropped towards £60,000 for the same policy, and this year it was frozen at just £28,900. The company has warned that 96% of customers with endowments are in the "red" zone where they won't grow fast enough to pay off mortgages.
Ten-year policies have fared little better. A 29-year-old man investing £50 a month over 10 years in early 2001 into a with-profits plan – a total £6,000 – ended up with £5,106 at London Life or £5,914 at Clerical Medical. While tiny Sheffield Mutual produced a table topping £10,826, the average was just £6,612 – a year-on-year gain of 1.7% and virtually the same, according to financial number crunchers Morningstar, as the bank and building society 90-day deposit rate.
Most of the 100 firms that offered endowments either no longer sell them, or have been swallowed up by vulture funds such as Phoenix or Resolution. At the same time, the proportion of equities, which tend to outperform bonds and cash, in the funds has declined. Funds that had 70% in shares in 2000 now have as little as 10%.
Morningstar reckons the mix of shares, bonds and other assets in a with-profits fund is similar to a "balanced managed" unit trust. It says a monthly £50 – irrespective of age, health or gender – into an average trust produced £8,397 over 10 years – far better than with-profits funds.
What should you do now?"Investors never really knew what they were buying," says Graeme Currie at IFA Alan Steel Asset Management, the firm that rang alarm bells over Equitable Life years before it hit the rocks. "Everything went wrong, from bad investment decisions to insurance company cash reserve rules, forcing them into low-return government bonds. If a client comes in with a with-profits investment, warning lights flash – they are likely to be a disaster, sold on the wrong basis by sales staff who had little idea what they were doing."
The choices are to stick with the plan, surrender, or leave what you have until the policy maturity date (a process known as "paid up").
Whether an endowment, savings scheme or pensions scheme, an annual bonus rate close to zero means you are throwing good money after bad. With inflation at 5%, your money needs to run hard to stay still. Ask about the ratio of shares to other investments – anything below 40% is bad news.
Whatever you do, you may still have a mis-selling case, say many claims management firms. You can go to the financial ombudsman within three years of becoming aware of a problem with your policy if you were misled over guaranteed gains, told the plan was risk-free, or told you had to buy an endowment to get a mortgage.
EndowmentsWith-profits fundsMortgagesPropertyInvestmentsSavingsPensionsTony LevenePatrick Collinsonguardian.co.ukLetters: We need a Beveridge to handle the huge growth in centenarians
In London, a substantial majority of the social care workforce is from non-UK countries (How will we care for the centenarians of the future?, 24 May). According to a recent Economic and Social Research Council report: "The reliance on recent migrant care workers is higher in sectors and services with lower pay and lower in the sectors and type of organisations with comparatively higher wages." As it is the private sector that is identified in the report as generally paying their workforce substantially less than the public and voluntary sectors, economies of exploitation spring to mind.
Perhaps local authorities should have borne this in mind when they cavalierly turned over the care of vulnerable older people and other adults to the private sector. It beggars belief that they did not realise that the workforce – mainly vulnerable recent migrants – would be so exploited.
Leon Kreitzman
Chair, Age Concern Lewisham & Southwark
• Danny Dorling raises important issues about demographic imbalances but omits the need to boost the status and value of caring, both formal and informal. We have a care system in crisis now, failing older people and shifting more of the cost and the care on to families.
That's why it's critical that the Dilnot commission's report in July recommends a new way to pay for care that is intergenerationally fair. Using older people's wealth, for example through a care duty on estates, would be a fairer way of paying for better care for our ageing population today and tomorrow.
Stephen Burke
Director, United for All Ages
• Lloyd George's introduction of old-age pensions in 1908 was widely acclaimed as the proto-welfare state, which after the second world war was the Attlee government's triumph. There is no such critical excitement for the future care of the elderly.
We need a Beveridge. Raising pension age, and equalising it at 65 for women, is unpopular, and while Danny Dorling's statistics are favourable on longevity they are not on paying for it. We don't all want, nor can we all afford, to move to Spain. Incentives for having more babies might be well received, but an open-door immigration policy would be less popular than a population cull.
Dr Graham Ullathorne
Chesterfield, Derbyshire
• Danny Dorling does not say where the care workers of the future will come
Letter: Women’s pensions
You were right to highlight that one of the ways government policies are impacting women unfairly is in the increase of the state pension age (How the coalition's blind spot on equality is letting women down, 21 May). The pensions bill before parliament will see the rise to 65 for women's state pension age brought forward two years to 2018 and then increased to 66, with men's, by 2020. As a result, 500,000 women aged 56 and 57 will endure a delay in their state pension of over a year; 33,000 will face a delay of two years. These women are of a generation that has faced years of inequality in the workplace: the gender pay gap was nearly 30% at the start of their working lives and they have often had interrupted careers, and so less chance to build up a pension outside the state system. And the measures in the bill are a clear breach of the coalition agreement, which promised the increase in the state pension age "will not be sooner than 2016 for men and 2020 for women". With the bill awaiting its second reading in the Commons, this is the time for the Lib Dems to hold the Tories to the agreement they signed last year.
Rachel Reeves MP
Shadow pensions minister
Women in politicsPensionsFeminismguardian.co.ukPensions minister criticises cash incentives for scheme transfers
Steve Webb says lure of cash incentives can persuade people to give up more valuable pension rights
Pensions minister Steve Webb is warning companies that the increasing use of cash incentives to persuade people to give up valuable pension rights smacks of bad practice and should be curbed.
The government's disapproval of this growing practice, where members in final salary pension schemes are offered superficially attractive cash payments to transfer their pension pots into less generous schemes, or to give up certain future benefits, will be made clear to key pension industry players at a private meeting this week.
Webb says he is particularly concerned about cases where, for example, vulnerable individuals are being offered cash lump sums just before Christmas to transfer out of a company's defined benefit scheme, which guarantees how much pension they will get in retirement, into a less generous defined contribution scheme where their eventual pension is uncertain and depends on stockmarket performance.
He is also angered by cash offers to retire early in exchange for reduced inflation protection that could result in the individual's pension purchasing power being reduced by 20%-25% after 20 years.
Webb said: "I am very concerned that people are making the wrong choices about their pensions and are missing out on substantial amounts of retirement cash. With one in six of us set to live to 100 and the average person spending 24 years in retirement, mistakenly stepping into a less generous pension scheme could mean missing out on thousands of pounds in retirement.
"We urgently need to make sure we root bad practice out of the market. The industry can't go on offering superficially attractive deals to people that ultimately leave them badly out of pocket."
The Pensions Regulator, the watchdog for work-based schemes, has also been looking at the issue and says pension transfers are an extremely difficult financial equation, and most people find it impossible to understand their options without help.
"The offer might look attractive, particularly with cash as an incentive, but poorly-informed decisions are likely to be regretted years later," chief executive Bill Galvin said. "We believe such offers won't be in most members' best interests and have pointed out that employers run significant risks in offering incentives to members to transfer out of defined benefit schemes."
The regulator recently ruled that employers who make such pension transfer offers to current and ex-staff must make independent and impartial financial advice available to them – and must pay for this advice. It also made clear that "no pressure of any sort should be placed on members to make a decision to accept the offer".
The concern is, however, that the complexity of the financial decisions involved, coupled with the lure of a cash lump sum upfront, means many people make the wrong choice even when independent financial advice is on offer. Webb says there is evidence that a high proportion of people advised to not take a pension transfer offer will ignore that advice.
But Webb has drawn a line at putting an outright ban on pension incentive practices because there are a minority of cases where people will benefit from accepting a cash offer to give up certain rights.
"Someone who is very ill, for example, who may not have a very long retirement may be better off taking the cash, or perhaps someone who thinks their company will go to the wall shortly may do better with the cash, so we are not going to ban [pension incentive offers] completely," Webb said. "But we have to get rid of the bad practice of people making complicated decisions with financial inducements when they really are not in a position to do that."
Occupational pensionsRetirement planningPensionsFamily financesWork & careersJill Papworthguardian.co.uk