£6.5 billion was withdrawn by savers using the pension freedoms last year.
According to the latest data from HM Revenue & Customs, the figure is almost £1 billion higher than 2016’s withdrawn total of £5.7 billion.
The data encompasses “flexible payments” from pensions, covering the purchase of a flexible annuity, full or partial withdrawals as well as flexible drawdown.
The final quarter of 2017 saw just under 200,000 people take payments from their pension, at a value of around £1.5 billion. This is slightly less than the previous three months, with quarter 3 of 2017 seeing £1.59 billion withdrawn.
Since pension freedoms were introduced in 2015, around £15.7 billion has been taken out of pension savings.
Commenting on the HMRC data was Stephen Lowe. The group communications director at Just Group stated: “Savers are enjoying the flexibility of being able to exercise greater choice about how to use their pension savings. More than £6.5bn was withdrawn last year, up 15 per cent from 2016, and there’s a school of thought that says that much money can’t be wrong.
“But the truth is we don’t know – the industry still has little idea whether these savings are being used sustainably.”
