Michael Johnson: Retirees need a default safety net for income (Money Observer)

Money Observer discusses Michael Johnson’s new report Auto-Protection at 55.

To read the full article, visit the Money Observer website.

“With pension freedom fast approaching, there is a very real danger that most people coming up to retirement will end up ‘adrift on a sea of indecision’ after April, says leading independent pension expert Michael Johnson, a research fellow at the Centre for Policy StMichael Johnsonudies.

As a consequence – despite the guarantee of guidance from the government – as many as 85 per cent of retirees are at risk of doing the wrong thing with their pension fund because they simply don’t understand the issues and don’t get sufficiently bespoke advice, he suggests.

This might mean they take a large lump sum and simply run out of money (as has happened in Australia, where there is no requirement to buy an annuity and ‘a third of the population and rising has run out of money by the age of 75’). Or it might mean they make poor investment choices that again result in them outliving their assets, or that they succumb to pension fraudsters.”

To read the full article, visit the Money Observer website

Date Added: Friday 27th February 2015