What’s happening in the world of personal finance? Spectator Money takes a closer look

On any given day, there’s a slew of personal finance stories. The most eye-catching are the ones that make it onto the BBC‘s radar, appear on Sky News, are printed in the pages of the national press, and pepper the best-read financial websites. Today we’re all hearing about energy firms’ opposition to a Conservative pledge to cap bills, worries over household debt, government borrowing, and potential fraud at a couple of top-flight football clubs. But what else is happening? Here’s a flavour of the financial agenda. Pension freedoms

HMRC has issued its pension freedoms statistics for the first three months of 2017. The data shows that UK consumers withdrew £1.59 billion in the first quarter, and a total of £10.8 billion from pensions during the first two years of the pension freedoms.

The average withdrawal per person continues to fall and now stands at £9,034 – less than half the average withdrawal in Q2 2015. Tom Selby, senior analyst at AJ Bell, said: ‘The pension freedoms have clearly been hugely popular.