Unlike Standard Life, Aviva reported the majority of customers with a Gar continued to take it up.
Aviva flatly rejected calls for life companies to pay out defined benefit transfer-style lump sums to those who did not want their Gar.
"The option is to take an annuity and not a guaranteed transfer value. The contract was priced and concluded on the basis that the option provides a guaranteed lifetime annuity," the spokesperson said.
Aviva also rejected the claim that the secondary annuity market would have solved this problem.
"The sale of an annuity would have resulted in a considerable write-down of its value thus annulling much of the extra value attached to the Gar the first instance," the spokesperson said.
"In effect, the main beneficiary would have been the buyer of the annuity rather than the annuitant (the seller) themselves."
Paul Gibson, managing director of Granite Financial Planning, agreed with Just Retirement that the way providers communicate the value of Gars "isn't great".
He said Gars were currently offering around twice as much as annuities on the open market, but this fact was easily lost on customers, particularly on those not receiving financial advice.
"Giving up a Gar is often the worst thing you can do, but for the average client it's difficult to compare A with B."
He said it would help if the customer was provided with a clear comparison of what they would receive if they converted their Gar, and what they would receive on the open market.
However, he stopped short of calling for transfer value analyses for all customers looking to cash out, saying it would be too expensive to do this.
He also said it wouldn't be fair to force life companies to pay out lump sums based on the value of the annuity, rather than the actual lump sum accumulated.
"It is a contract and if the insurer is honouring their side of it, then it is not really fair to make them pay more," he said.
james.fernyhough@ft.com
