My wife has an old hybrid Aviva Pension meaning it’s part DC and part DB. We enquired of the administrators a few years ago about access after age 50 and were told no, the trustees were not currently allowing this to happen, presumably for the reasons you say Dave. That situation has now changed and early access is possible if we agree a cash equivalent of the DB benefits. I wonder why that wasn’t offered earlier. Anyway it’s all irrelevant now as the DB element has been revalued upwards and the current cash offer is only about 13 times the annual income benefit. We think it’s better to leave things as they are for now.