FOS reveals annuities are new complaints battleground

Annuities have become the new focus for complaints according to figures from the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), a year after the product was publicly abandoned by the Chancellor.

George Osborne declared in his 2014 Budget that "no-one will have to buy an annuity", sweeping away many of the regulations on pensions and freeing savers to do what they like with their retirement savings. In the year that followed up to the end of March 2015, new complaints to the FOS about annuities, while still relatively few in number at 776, have jumped by a third, the biggest increase of any pension product. The only other financial product in that category where FOS reported a rise in complaints was one that has seen sales increase since the pension reform announcement, income...