Two thirds of consumers find annuities 'unacceptable'

The number of people who find having to buy an annuity acceptable has fallen from 57% to 30% since 2001. Meanwhile the popularity of income drawdown has risen dramatically since A-Day. Skandia’s income drawdown sales rose 259% in the twelve months to April 2007 compared with the previous year. Nick Bladen, head of pensions marketing at Skandia, says: “The concept of forced annuitisation is clearly still unacceptable to a significant group of people, so advisers have a crucial role to play here in opening up other options to their clients. For many people, the freedom of being able to ke...