The end of the road for insane pension transfer values

The Pensions Regulator could put a stop to the ridiculously high offers made to people transferring out of their defined-benefit pension schemes.

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Defined-benefit pension schemes may have to stop super-generous payouts to leavers
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A couple of years ago, when I first started writing about whether or whether not you should think about transferring out of your defined-benefit pension scheme, some of the transfer values being offered to potential scheme leavers seemed insanely high. So high that in a good many cases (not all) cashing in so giving up a guaranteed inflation-linked income for life for a lump sum and the uncertainty of the stockmarkets actually made sense. I said as much here and here.

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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.