Figures show no improvement in pension transfer times

Pension transfer times have failed to improve, despite growing use of the ABI’s Options initiative.

Origen's latest report on industry progress to speeding up transfer times shows it took and average of 11 days to transfer pension funds to a third-party annuity provider in the final quarter of 2009.

The average time taken has remained static since Q2 2009, and was as low as eight days in the first quarter of last year.

MGM Advantage continues to offer the quickest transfers, with an average of 6.4 days, slightly up from 6 days in Q3.

Guardian was close behind MGM, with an average 7 day transfer, while Co-operative Financial Services was third fastest, providing money to annuity providers in 7.4 days.

Prudential slipped back, with an average transfer time of 8 days in the final three months of the year, compared to 6.3 days in the previous quarter.

Pearl Group brands continued to lag behind, taking up 27.9 days on average for the worst performing brand, Pearl Assurance.

MGM Advantage proposition manager, Eyeedul Haque, says: "We are really pleased that Options has already done so much to speed up transfer times between providers.

"At MGM Advantage, we're committed to doing everything we can to make sure people at retirement start getting their annuity payments in the shortest possible amount of time."