How to protect your pension from fraud

Pensions fraud has always been a problem, but with five million people set to hit 55 in the next five years, the new pension rules introduce new risks. Merryn Somerset Webb explains who to avoid getting stung.

This week marks what The Daily Telegraph is calling "arguably one of the biggest social and economic revolutions of the past 50 years" the introduction of George Osborne's pension freedoms. Assuming they can get their pensions provider to agree to it (and they haven't already bought an annuity), the over-55s can now withdraw money from their pensions as and when they wish, subject to paying their marginal rate of income tax on anything over the first 25%.

You could think of this as an "administrative adjustment to recognise all of our changing financial services", says the paper. But it's more than that.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.