Pension Freedoms Statistics: £15.7bn From April 2015

Over 3.2 million taxable payments have been made using pension freedoms, with 198,000 people accessing £1.5 billion flexibly from their pension pots over the last 3 months, according to published HMRC figures.

There has been some discussion on the reason for the reduction of the average payment per individual in the last quarter but because providers don’t record the reason for the payments, it will all be speculation. It does appear though that the number of individuals accessing payments may have stabilized around the 200,000 mark each quarter but that could also just be coincidence.

Notes to the table
i) The numbers published for 2015-16 are not comprehensive as to manage the burden on industry reporting was optional for 2015-16 but compulsory from April 2016. The increase in reported payments seen in 2016 Q2 is expected to partly result from this.
ii) The data underpinning these figures comes from Real Time Information (RTI) reports submitted to HMRC.

Footnotes
1. Figures are rounded to the nearest 1,000.
2. Figures are rounded to the nearest £10 million.
3. Includes taxable payments only.
4. The number of individuals for the year totals are less than the sum of the number of individuals from each quarter as some have taken payments in multiple quarters.
5. Quarterly figures may not sum to total due to rounding.

Source: https://www.techlink.co.uk/