UK engineering company 600 Group has derisked its 2,800-member defined benefit pension scheme with a $270m (£210m) buy-in policy from the Pension Insurance Corporation before moving to full buyout next year.

Consumers and employers could reap substantial benefits if the complex patchwork of defined benefit pension rights could be radically simplified, according to a recent policy paper.

On the go: Insurers are set to be deluged with a flood of requests to restructure buy-in contracts as a result of the High Court decision in the Lloyds Banking case, which held that guaranteed minimum pensions must be equal for men and women.

On the go: Workers in the UK need to save a total of 13 per cent of their annual household income from the age of 25 and aim to have seven times their annual household income saved by age 68, according to Fidelity International.

On the go: The number of “early retirees” is at a 23-year low, according to latest employment figures from the Office for National Statistics, signalling that despite vestiges of ageism the older worker is in the ascendant.

On the go: The aggregate deficit of the UK’s 5,588 pension schemes in the PPF 7800 Index has nearly tripled over October to £107.7bn at the month’s end, from a deficit of £38.7bn at the end of September 2018.

On the go: A record 9,937,000 workers have been auto-enrolled into a pension scheme since 2012 according to data from the Pensions Regulator’s monthly auto-enrolment compliance statistics released on November 13.

On the go: Encouragingly, half of the over-40s in the UK have sufficient basic knowledge of the factors that may influence their later-life income to avoid the worst retirement pitfalls. However, one in 14 people are at high risk of making poor financial choices.

On the go: October has seen the biggest rise in defined benefit transfer values in over a year, with a growth of 3.6 per cent over the month.