£12.7bn accessed flexibly since pension freedom - govt figures

Data published in July for the two-year period since the second quarter of 2015 showed £12.7bn has been accessed flexibly so far - £1.86bn of that in the second quarter of this year alone. Documents published alongside the spring Budget showed the government had raised nearly five times more income tax than expected in the first year of pension freedom. However, the average withdrawal per person reduced from £11,132 in the second quarter of 2016 to £9,300 in the corresponding period in 2017. At the same time the average number of payments per person were up, from 1.86 to 1.97. This...