Compulsory and Voluntary Annuity Markets in the United Kingdom

This chapter describes the operation of both the compulsory pension annuity and voluntary annuity markets in the U.K. and evaluates prices using a money’s worth approach. We find that the money’s worth was about 0.90 to 2004 but it then fell to about 0.80, although there is uncertainty about the appropriate mortality table. We suggest that the level of the money’s worth is comparable to that of other financial products and we consider possible reasons for the recent fall.