At Budget 2014 the Chancellor announced that, from April 2015 onwards, restrictions on accessing private Defined Contribution (DC) savings from age 55 would be removed. Further to this, the Government published a consultation document Freedom and choice in pensions providing details on how these proposals might work in practice.
This Briefing Note considers the rationale for increasing the minimum pension age in line with the SPA. It then explores the extent to which the current minimum pension age influences saving and retirement behaviour, the differences in minimum pension ages and SPAs between the UK and other countries, and some practical implementation issues that might arise as a result of future increases to the minimum pension age.
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