The first line of the Wikipedia article on pensions is more accurate than wherever you’ve pulled that from:

> A pension (/ˈpɛnʃən/; from Latin pensiō 'payment') is a fund into which amounts are paid regularly during an individual's working career, and from which periodic payments are made to support the person's retirement from work.

A pension is a financial instrument. There’s no need to purchase an annuity, which means a pension organised correctly can be passed on to your children or spouse, and there’s no lottery or gamble angle.

> wherever you’ve pulled that from

A dictionary: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/dictiona...

The wikipedia definition is strange. A pension is not a fund. A pension fund is a fund! (There is also a wikipedia page for that!)

Apart from that how is “regular income paid by to someone who no longer works“ different from “periodic payments made to support the person's retirement from work” anyway?

Because you missed the original distinction, which is that an annuity — a product purchased using your pension savings where all the value is lost when you die — is not the same as other pensions, where for example you have stocks and shares paying dividends, in a pension wrapper, and those pass on to your estate when you die.

The word pension is overloaded. A SIPP is a pension, the state pension is a pension, and people refer to their annuity as pensions too.

> A pension is not a fund. A pension fund is a fund!

The word fund is being used in two different ways here. A pension is a fund, but is not a Pension Fund.

The wikipedia page you mention says that "The common use of the term pension is to describe the payments a person receives upon retirement, usually under predetermined legal or contractual terms."

I'm familiar with retirement accounts and pension plans in a number of countries but not in the UK. I see that in the UK "pension" is often used a short-hand for "pension scheme" (it seems a relatively new development which I've not seen reflected in dictionaries).

For what it's worth, the wikipedia page for Personal_pension is redirected to Personal_pension_scheme: "A personal pension scheme (PPS), sometimes called a personal pension plan (PPP), is ..."