FCA tells providers to look into annuity sales since 2008; finds ABI code being ignored

Laura Miller
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The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is asking annuity providers to look into their non-advised sales going back to 2008 to see if consumers missed out on higher income by buying the wrong type of annuity.

The regulator stopped short of demanding a full review of past business for the last six years, at this stage. But it said it wants providers to "gather more evidence, on a statistically significant basis, to determine whether customers with certain medical conditions or lifestyle factors missed out on a higher income in retirement". The ways the FCA thinks people could have missed out is by purchasing a standard annuity, rather than an enhanced one, or by not shopping around for an enhanced annuity and as a result purchasing an enhanced annuity from their current provider rather than...

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