This blog is in support of FinTech Week 2026.
When was the last time you checked your pension? If you answered ‘recently’, you’re in the minority. Most people in the UK probably know their current account balance to within £50, yet have no idea about their pension. Apps like Starling and Emma have been at the forefront of using technology to make daily banking and budgeting easier.
Fintech has made those things simpler, faster, and cheaper and changed how we think about payments, banking, and investing. But there’s one financial product most UK savers have that’s lagging behind in its technological innovations. Their pension.
Pensions remain underserved in fintech
Fintech has done some amazing things for everyday finance over the past decade. Payments between digital accounts can be made instantly. Switching your current account is now a seven-day right under the Current Account Switch Service. Opening an investment account takes minutes, not weeks.
When it comes to pensions, though, it’s something that happens to many people rather than something they take control of themselves. Often, their only interaction is receiving annual statements. And frequent job changes can create multiple pensions scattered across providers.
Outside of a home, a pension’s often the next biggest financial account most people will own. Yet keeping on top of this important part of their financial life is stuck in the past with slow, manual processes. Many people simply don't know where their money is, how much it's worth, or what fees are being charged, with billions in pension savings potentially at risk of being ‘lost’ in the UK.
That's not necessarily a retirement planning problem. Taking control of your pension has been left as a difficult and opaque process. But it doesn’t have to be like that. PensionBee was born when CEO Romi Savova faced great difficulty switching pension providers. She encountered archaic systems, excessive fees and complex paperwork.
The cost of not taking control of your pension
Our Cost of Pension Disengagement report found that choosing the right investment strategy can boost your pension by up to £500,000 compared to doing nothing. Consistent contributions could add around £190,000 on top of that. Consolidating scattered pots and cutting unnecessary fees could contribute another £40,000.
These differences aren’t due to not making complex decisions, but largely not giving their pensions the attention they need. But the system makes it hard: transfers take weeks, fees are opaque, and managing multiple pots is difficult.
Until recently, there was no way to see your pension balance in real time, no app or dashboard, just a paper letter once a year at best.
Pensions should be fit for the 21st century
Personal bank accounts have been around for a long time now, yet the way they’re managed has changed dramatically over the years. It’s not as though fintech companies invented the current account. Instead, they innovated the experience around what people actually needed: visibility, control and simplicity. The same logic should apply to pensions.
Much of the pension industry continues to lag behind the kind of transformation traditional financial services have seen. However, PensionBee’s been at the forefront of bringing pension management into the 21st century with features, including:
- access to your pension balance 24/7;
- flexible contributions and withdrawals (from the age of 55, rising to 57 from 2028);
- plan performance information; and
- retirement planning tools to help show your pension projections.
And all in a few taps or clicks from our mobile app or website. Plus, every customer gets a dedicated UK-based ‘BeeKeeper’ to help consolidate pensions, switch plans, and manage their account.
Unfortunately, not every pension provider offers the same visibility and flexibility over your pension. But the barriers are institutional, not technological.
Flying the flag for innovation in the pension industry
UK Fintech Week offers a chance to discuss fintech’s future and celebrate achievements like faster payments, open banking, and consumer-first products that didn’t exist a decade ago. That progress is real, and it deserves recognition.
At PensionBee, we’re building a simpler, more transparent pension service. But we’re also a voice for broader industry changes, like a 10-day Pension Switch Guarantee.
Effectively saving into and managing your pension, however, remains a big gap in the industry. Most UK workers will spend decades contributing to a pension, and the quality of the experience they have while doing so can affect the size of their pension pot when they retire. That experience needs to dramatically improve across the industry. Fortunately, making that happen is exactly the kind of problem fintech exists to solve.
Risk warning
As always with investments, your capital is at risk. The value of your investment can go down as well as up, and you may get back less than you invest. This information should not be regarded as financial advice.
Period | Market Event | FTSE World TR GBP (%) | 4Plus Plan (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
4Plus Plan’s inception – 6 Sept 2013 | QE Tapering, China Interbank Crisis and its aftermath | -5.44 | -2.41 |
3 Oct 2014 – 15 May 2015 | Oil price drop, Eurozone deflation fears & Greek election outcome | -5.87 | -1.77 |
7 Jan 2016 – 14 Mar 2016 | China’s currency policy turmoil, collapse in oil prices and weak US activity | -7.26 | -1.54 |
15 June 2016 – 30 June 2016 | BREXIT referendum | -2.05 | -1.07 |
