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From the tax-free pension cash that's proving popular amongst those with retirement in their sights, to the investors looking to ditch stocks and shares, our round-up looks at the latest personal finance news affecting the over-50s.
More than three-quarters of savers (76%) aged between 55 and 64 say they have already taken their pension tax-free lump sum, according to research from the investment platform AJ Bell.
Pension rules say that, once you reach the age of 55, up to a quarter of your accrued pension fund can be taken as a tax-free cash lump sum. The age limit rises to 57 from 2028.
Depending on the pension pot in question, the amount – technically known as the Pension Commencement Lump Sum – can be worth tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds. Along with tax relief, the pension tax-free lump sum is one of the main advantages of saving for retirement via a pension plan.
AJ Bell’s finding comes as official figures show that, overall, savers of all ages withdrew a record £22 billion in tax-free pensions cash in the 2025/26 tax year. This was up 20% on the previous 12-month period, itself a high-water figure.
The surge over the past two years has been most likely driven by unfounded fears of potential changes to pension taxation in the run-up to both the 2024 and 2025 Budget.
Sarah Coles, head of personal finance at AJ Bell warned that, when it comes to the 55 to 64yo cohort, there’s a risk that some savers are withdrawing the cash without considering the impact on their overall retirement income.
She said: “Taking the cash early comes with two downsides to pension customers. It restricts the total that they can invest tax-free, and it hampers the future growth of the pot.
“If they have invested it outside a pension they may be exposed to tax, if they have saved the money in cash they have cut its growth potential. And if they have spent it, they have drastically reduced the money they have to live on in retirement.
UK investors bailed out of investment funds exposed to stocks and shares to the tune of nearly £1 billion last month, preferring instead the perceived safer haven of asset classes such as bonds.
Latest figures from analysts Calastone show that investors withdrew a net figure of £858 million from equity funds in September 2026. Equities are another way of describing stocks and shares, such as those traded on the London Stock Exchange or on overseas markets.
The findings mean that investors have effectively ditched stocks and shares-based funds for 15 of the past 16 months and, over the longer term, 63 times out of the past 65.
In contrast, Calastone reported that fixed-income investments continue to attract UK investors with bond funds enjoying a net inflow of £655 million this September alone and £3.53 billion over the year to date.
Bonds are a form of IOU issued by governments and companies when they want to borrow money from investors via the market, enticing them with regular interest payments before returning the loan after a set period.
According to financial advisers, wider geo-political considerations caused by the Middle East conflict, as well as the economic climate closer to home, currently make this asset class of interest to income-seeking investors.
Especially those who are willing to take modest amounts of investment risk in exchange for superior returns to those afforded by savings products.
Edward Glyn, head of global markets at Calastone, said: “Investors are nervous and this is making them very picky. Equities overall remain firmly out of favour, particularly UK stocks, despite relatively resilient market performance.
High share prices, surging bond yields, and significant geo-political and inflation concerns mean investors have plenty of reasons to question how much equity risk they want to carry.
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One in ten responses given by widely-used AI chatbots to commonly asked pensions questions could have left savers either losing money, or making irreversible financial mistakes.
The warning comes from pension provider PensionBee which carried out a human-run test that asked four AI sources pensions-related queries across nine subject areas.
These included questions on topics such as the state pension, how to transfer and combine policies, pension scams and where to get help with pensions.
The company said that the majority of the 539 answers provided by Copilot, ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude 45 were “broadly accurate”. But it described 57 answers (11%) as “potentially harmful".
PensionBee said that responses from the AI agents to questions about paying into and taking money out of pensions scored highly. But answers to queries about life events and where the location of the question-setter was unclear had lower accuracy with greater potential to cause financial harm.
The company defined “harm” as a situation where a response could cause a saver to lose money or make a mistake that could not subsequently be undone.
One of the most common problems encountered by PensionBee’s testers was the omission of information that could materially change an answer.
For example, a response about combining old pensions left out the fact that transferring a defined benefit pension worth more than £30,000 legally requires regulated advice.
Becky O’Connor, head of pensions at PensionBee, said: “Using AI chatbots for pension advice can be a bit like playing Russian roulette with your retirement planning.
"While for the most part it gets things technically right, the confident, helpful tone of answers occasionally masks some worrying omissions, it may fail to detect vulnerability, or just straight up get things wrong."
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