Pension income on track for biggest fall in a decade The report also found that the annuity market had never been more uncompetitive. The choice of annuity providers offering the "open market option" to buyers shopping around remained at an all-time low, Moneyfacts said. Growing numbers of retiring people are refusing to buy annuities at today's disappointing rates of return. Three and a half years ago, three annuities were sold for every four people turning 65. Now the figure is just one in two. As a result, almost a million potential annuity buyers have become "annuity refuseniks" since 2009. In that year, 633,000 people turned 65 and 462,000 annuities were sold, along with 24,500 alternative schemes for taking a pension income, according to figures collated by Hargreaves Lansdown, the advisory firm. This means that 147,000 refused to buy anything. That number rose to 194,000 in 2010, 245,000 in 2011 and a projected 381,000 this year. The total number of people who rejected annuities over the four-year period is therefore predicted to be 967,000. Over the same period the annual income available by spending £100,000 on an annuity has fallen from about £7,300 to £5,900, or by almost 20pc.