From 'give us a quote' to 'what should I do?': How Budget 2014 is transforming client behaviour

When George Osborne delivered the March Budget, he caught the entire industry off guard. There had been an established status quo: those with a defined contribution pension would buy an annuity when they retired, or wealthier individuals would delay doing so until age 75, at which point punitive tax rates of up to 82% made it a near-certainty that an annuity would be bought. It should come as no surprise, then, that annuity providers took a big hit following the revolutionary pension freedoms, sparking a prediction that the market as a whole would shrink 25% by the end of 2015. Amongs...