The ABI has announced it will be implementing a code of conduct for ABI members providing retirement products, in order to help customers make informed choices about annuities.

Aviva was supportive of the advice saying it believed customers should all get the same level of care but Hargreaves Lansdown felt more could be done.

Clive Bolton, at-retirement director at Aviva, said: “This new code of conduct will significantly improve transparency and facilitate the development of a healthy, reformed and competitive retirement market place.

“Providers who seek to provide poor value annuities (including those which are medically underwritten) to their own pension customers will now be faced with greater scrutiny due to the commitment by the ABI to look at how best to publish all annuity rates.”

Tom McPhail, head of pensions research at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “Looking ahead to this time next year I think we will have gone way towards delivering a system which genuinely helps defined contribution pension investors to get good value for money from their pensions at the point of retirement.”

But he suggested points of improvements such as having the code apply to the whole of the defined contribution market, removing sample rates from retirement packs and developing a directory of brokers for shopping around.

There has also been criticism of the fact the code will not come into force until March 2013.