14th February 2014
TISA: FCA annuities review announcements
We would like to confirm that today the FCA has announced the results of its thematic review on annuities, published a guidance consultation paper on annuity comparison websites for consultation and launched a competition market study into retirement income.
The thematic review was designed as research to understand whether the risks to consumers buying annuities with their existing pension providers required action. We have identified some concerns which have led us to conclude that there may be features of the market that are not working well for consumers and that further work is needed.
We have, therefore, announced the launch of a competition market study and published its terms of reference. The study will explore in more detail how pension providers are treating their customers and will be conducting further supervisory work to investigate providers’ annuities sales practices to their existing pension customers.
We have also published a guidance consultation on annuity comparison websites which sets out the findings from our financial promotion review and provides guidance to firms about how they can meet the requirement to be fair, clear and not misleading when selling annuities to consumers through these sites.
Full details of our announcements can be found here: http://www.fca.org.uk/news/thematic-reviews/tr14-02-thematic-review-of-annuities
If you have any questions, please contact:
On the thematic review, Katherine Browne at Katherine.browne@fca.org
On the guidance consultation, Nick Butler at Nicholas.butler@fca.org.uk
On the market study, Eve Cinnirella at Eve.cinnirella@fca.org.uk
TISA
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