Invensys Pension Scheme has launched a three-pronged attack on its liabilities by offering defined benefit members cash for smaller pensions and the option of trading in pension increases on larger pots – while planning to cease all accrual.

If the workplace pensions industry should be judged by how it treats existing customers then today's revelations on defined contribution scheme charges find it at best unfair and at worst extortionate.

The Independent Project Board, set up to dig deeper into an area analysed last year by the Office of Fair Trading, looked at workplace pensions sold pre-2001 – or those sold since that have charges of more than 1 per cent, or more than one type of charge.

This amounts to £56.9bn in contract-based schemes and £10.6bn in bundled trust-based schemes, which is almost two-thirds of the UK defined contribution market. Using a reduction in yield measure – which contains all costs paid except transaction costs – the board found a depressing picture.

The nation has £26bn of savings in poor-value schemes

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Will the Financial Conduct Authority's investigation of the annuities market never end? Even today's market study, and accompanying review of sales practices, will preface further work – by providers this time.

This will be to determine whether savers with certain lifestyles or medical conditions lost out through purchasing a standard annuity rather than an enhanced annuity, or through not shopping around. Providers are being asked to check their own homework on questions we know the answers to (yes and yes).

This widespread investigation of what is going wrong with the annuity market could, conversely, give the market a boost at a time when it is under the most scrutiny. One of the watchdog's main conclusions, in their words:

Source: The FCA's market study

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Any other business: Whether the 'good old days' of corporate hospitality provided important relationship building, or were symbolic of an overly cosy relationship between pension funds and their providers, the consensus is that times have changed.

Today's statement from chancellor George Osborne was like a cold flannel to the forehead of the pensions industry, compared with the madness of March. That the taxation of dependants' pensions was a central talking point is probably telling.

Here are the main takeaways from the speech and the Treasury documents that affect your scheme, or more usefully in this case, your scheme members:

Boost for dependants' pensions (and Isas)

It is perhaps appropriate that following the kicking annuities received in March, today's changes left defined benefit schemes feeling hard done by.

The chancellor's decision to scrap the tax on income from joint-life or guaranteed-term annuities is a welcome boost for people who purchase these products and have the one-in-10 bad luck of dying between ages 65 and 75. 

But why has it not been extended to spouses and dependants of defined benefit scheme members is anyone's guess. "There is no sensible reason for it," said David Robbins, senior consultant at consultancy Towers Watson, on the subject of joint-life annuities and scheme pensions. "They should both be treated the same."

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