Authors
Summary
What policies might help people manage their defined contribution pension wealth in later life? In this report, we consider policies to help people appropriately manage their defined contribution (DC) pension wealth through later life. We draw on evidence in a report published alongside this one (Boileau, Cribb and Emmerson, 2025), which sets out key information on the landscape in which current and future retirees are making pension withdrawal decisions. That report describes the generation-on-generation rises in DC pension wealth, the huge amount of variation in how people currently draw upon that wealth, with relatively few purchasing annuities, and the wide range of financial risks that are faced throughout retirement. Managing wealth in retirement is difficult, and policy design in this area is not straightforward – particularly after the near-compulsory annuitisation of DC pensions was abolished in 2015. Whatever its merits, we have found little support for returning to a pre-2015 situation. But change is needed to help people navigate how to make good decisions over how to draw on DC pension wealth and to help people balance the benefits of flexibility while limiting some of the risks they face. This report therefore sets out a set of policy suggestions that for many should reduce the risk that they end up with low living standards later in retirement as a result of making poor decisions on how to draw upon their DC pension wealth.