MSE News: Tax break for some annuity holders: Autumn Statement 2014

The "joint life annuities can be passed on to any beneficiary. Currently, they can only be passed to a spouse" part is unlikely to apply to existing annuities. It's more likely that it is a change in the law to allow new annuity products to be introduced that allow this. The reason is the huge difference in life expectancy between a spouse and a grandchild if a current joint life annuity was written on the basis of the ages of the spouses and someone then tries to get that paid to the grandchild with perhaps 60 more years to pay out.