Roadblocks on the route to pensions freedom

Not everyone is enjoying all the benefits of pensions freedom. Merryn Somerset Webb runs through the options for frustrated pensioners.

Pensions freedom doesn't seem to be going quite as smoothly as some hoped it would. The headline on last Saturday's Daily Telegraph said it all: "millions more in pensions rip off".

It turns out that while a good number of the over-55s interpreted the new legislation as allowing them simply to use their pension as a bank account withdrawing money at will, ATM-style the big pension providers see it rather differently. So some "three million people are blocked from using their funds like bank accounts" and around two million "cannot cash in their funds at all" due to red tape and expense.

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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.