Pension freedoms: £4.7bn paid out in first six months

Smaller pots are generally being taken as cash, the 250-member body said, while larger pots are still being used to access retirement income, with £5bn invested to buy some 85,000 regular income products - either annuities or income drawdown. Annuity sales saw their first quarter-on-quarter increase for more than three years, with some £1.17bn worth of sales in Q3 2015 compared with £990m last quarter. The ABI's total sales figures contradict those published by HMRC last month, which suggested just £2.7bn had been accessed in the six months since April, though HMRC admitted its data w...