Insiders score
More info3.5out of 5
Penfold is one of a new breed of “smartphone pension” providers focused on a slick digital service and making saving for retirement simple. Their easy-to-use app and web platform is used by 75,000 individuals wanting to save for their retirement, and thousands of employers to manage workplace pension schemes for their employees.
14.1%
24.8%
14.1%
24.8%
February 2024 Penfold launches crowdfunding drive.
Penfold is ideally suited to small business owners who want to set up a good, reliable company pension for employees, with as little hassle as possible. This is a tech solution that is designed to keep auto-enrolment simple for employers.
Penfold also provides a
One really nice feature of the Penfold SIPP is that it’s flexible – you can pause it, raise and lower deposit amounts which means you can keep it totally within your control. Penfold, therefore, might suit those who are also trying to save for a house, or who occasionally need to redirect their money to other areas of their life.
That said, SIPP savers wanting an active involvement in their investments will not find what they want at Penfold. There are just five plans to choose from and no chance to pick your own stocks or funds within those plans. So, it’s really only suited to people who want to keep things very simple indeed and tick ‘set up a pension’ off their to-do list.
As things stand, Penfold definitely seems more focused on the workplace pension side of the business, If you’re self-employed or an individual wanting more control over your retirement fund, there may be other providers who cater exclusively to your needs, and who offer more competitive fees, although it is a great app and the flexibility is useful.
3.5out of 5
Penfold provides two different services, intended for two different groups of people:
Within both products, individual savers can choose from the following five funds:
Standard Lifetime plan
Managed by BlackRock. The Standard Lifetime plan is Penfold’s default fund, so if you can’t make your mind up, this is where your money will go, and all employees in the workplace pension start off here. The fund is designed to automatically adjust your asset allocation (what you are invested in) as you edge towards retirement age and need something less risky.
This plan has been designed to meet the needs of the majority of savers who do not receive financial advice and who don’t want to make their own investment or fund risk decisions. It's intended to be a low-cost and good value outcome.
Standard Plan
Managed by BlackRock. This plan is suitable for those who want to switch up the level of risk their investment is exposed to over time (which is wise as, generally, the closer you get to retirement, the safer you want your money to be). Investing in this fund, you can choose from four risk levels from low to high. Penfold makes it easy to adjust your risk level in a couple of taps, online or in your app.
Sustainable
Managed by BlackRock. The Sustainable plan is Penfold’s ethical, green pension option. With this option, you get 3 risk levels to choose from: Level 5 – Highest growth potential and risk; Level 3 – Low to medium growth potential and risk; Level 1 – Lowest growth potential and risk.
Sustainable Lifetime
Similar to Standard Lifetime, with more consideration given to ethical (
Sharia
Managed by HSBC. Approved by an independent Sharia committee, this plan invests 100% in shares that are fully compliant with Sharia law.
Penfold SIPP
Penfold started out as a pension for the self-employed in 2019 and expanded to offering pensions to all individuals in 2021. The SIPP can be used to consolidate other pensions (including workplace pensions) or to start an entirely new pension saving pot.
There are four things I really like about this SIPP:
So, what about the negatives?
With the introduction of their workplace pension in Autumn 2021, focus shifted away from the SIPP and there has been growing feedback about a lack of love on the SIPP customer service side.
There are five funds to choose from, so, not a lot of choice, but that may suit you if you find the sea of options offered by the big investment houses overwhelming.
Penfold Workplace Pension
Also known as a Group Personal Pension, this product is designed for employers setting up a workplace pension plan for employees.
The same five funds (see above) are available for employees. Initially, everyone is entered into the Standard Lifetime plan, but, once the pension is operational, employees can go into their portal and select a different plan, if they choose, tailored to their risk level.
As someone who has been in countless workplace pensions where I admit I had no idea what funds or assets my retirement savings were being invested in, I love how easily I can become involved in this workplace pension and the decisions that will impact what kind of retirement I can enjoy.
Important: With investments, your capital is at risk. Pensions can go down in value as well as up, so you could get back less than you invest.
Penfold’s
Although only having been around for a short period of time, Penfold’s offerings aren’t overly impressive either. Over the past three years, even its riskiest (and by virtue highest-return) fund underperforms all but one of its peers’ riskiest funds, in Moneyfarm. However, the difference becomes more stark when looking at its performance over the past year, where Penfold ranks last. Its riskiest funds average a return of 6.8%, while PensionBee posted 9.6%, Moneybox at 13.0%, and Moneyfarm at 8.7%.
It’s for these reasons that I don’t see Penfold as a viable option for investors seeking to invest in ready-made portfolios. This is especially the case when there are an array of more diverse and better-performing offerings on the market. Nevertheless, it’s worth noting that most of these figures are just averages. I’d still encourage investors to assess the data for themselves, as averages don’t always paint the full picture.
4.0out of 5
One of the benefits of buying shares in a company is that they often come with voting rights. However, due to the nature of pension funds, investors usually don’t have the same ability to have their say, despite the fact they technically own a part of the company.
Penfold is unusual, though, in that they enable investors to have a voice through a partnership with a voting infrastructure fintech called Tumelo.
Through your ‘Have Your Say’ dashboard within your account, Penfold savers can cast a vote, although those votes are intended just to give an opinion and are not binding. Votes are collected together and the majority decision is then sent to the fund manager (Blackrock or HSBC). The fund manager will then share this result at the AGM, although they do not necessarily need to adhere to the opinion of savers as they have final discretion over how they vote. You can see how you voted, how the majority of Penfold savers voted, and the overall result at any time by logging in to your Tumelo account.
For contrast, savers with PensionBee are not entitled to any voting rights attached to their underlying investments, so if having your say is something that matters to you, Penfold could be a good match.
5.0out of 5
Mobile platform
Savers are directed to the Penfold mobile app.
Penfold describes their personal pension as a “tech-first pension for savers.” So, if you’re wanting to use Penfold for a personal pension, you’ve got to be happy with the usability of the Penfold app. I found it to be very intuitive with a nice user interface and a journey that is well-thought-through. The design is really welcoming and says ‘we’re not like all the others’. But, as a fintech challenger brand, not being like the others is what they’re aiming for!
I love the app’s features which include a free pension forecast tool which allows you to model different contribution amounts, and change retirement dates and other factors, to clearly see how much you’re on track to save into your retirement pot, and how much income that will give you as a retiree.
Web platform
Employers are directed to the Penfold web-based platform.
It’s built for payroll bulk processing and, again, you can tell plenty of thought has gone into the user experience. The easy-to-use technology completely eliminates the hassle of downloading, reformatting and uploading: instead, you can simply drag and drop files into the platform and Penfold’s smart tech will do the processing for you. You can even bulk upload files in one go and the software will automatically identify and process them by employee details.
Within the platform, there are detailed breakdowns of contribution statuses, histories, opt-out summaries, and employee contribution data – making auditing easy as you know all your key documents are stored in one place. And you can set reminders for payment and re-enrolment dates, which all helps with compliance.
Demo account
You can request a demo of the Penfold pension, but there is no demo account. You don’t need one, however, as the account itself takes no time at all to get used to.
3.0out of 5
SIPP
Penfold charges an annual fee as a percentage of your total pension pot value, which is automatically deducted from your pension pot: 0.75% (or 0.88% for the Sharia plan)
If your pension pot size is larger than £100,000, the fee is reduced to: 0.4% (0.53% for the Sharia plan)
The verdict?
For a
You do get a lot of convenience with Penfold as everything is made so easy, but you need to ask yourself whether you’re prepared to take money away from your pension pot to pay for that.
Workplace pension scheme
Penfold’s workplace pension scheme is free for employers to set up.
Charges for savers are the same as the SIPP, namely, one annual fee as a percentage of your total pension pot value: 0.75% (or 0.88% for the Sharia plan)
If your pension pot size is larger than £100,000, the fee is reduced to: 0.4% (0.53% for the Sharia plan)
The verdict?
On set up fees, Penfold compares very favourably with other workplace pension providers with no set up fees at all. NEST is similarly free to set up but, in contrast, The People’s Pension charges a £500 set up fee, Smart Pension charges £15 per month to run your pension (£30 per month if you pay by BACs), and Aviva charges £30-£50 monthly depending on scheme size and proposition. Now Pensions charges £36 per month. Penfold and NEST are clear winners here.
For savers/employees, however, Penfold’s fees are far from the cheapest if your pot amounts to less than £100k at 0.75% (0.88% for the Sharia plan).
The provider average seems to be 0.3%, with Aviva, Royal London, Smart Pension and Now Pensions all setting their annual management charge at this 0.3% mark. Fidelity is slightly higher at 0.35% and The People’s Pension comes in at 0.5%, although there’s a reduction at £50k.
Penfold’s fees become slightly more competitive if you tip over that £100k threshold at 0.4% (0.53% for Sharia). And if you take additional charges that some other providers apply, such as the £1.75% monthly admin charge from Smart Pension, the £1.25 monthly admin charge from Now Pensions, and NEST’s 1.8% charge for each new contribution, things start to even out, although by how much depends on your pot size of course.
Penfold could reasonably claim to earn those additional percentage points with its well-perfoming funds and high-tech, ease-of-use app. Penfold also has one of the best Trustpilot scores, suggesting high levels of satisfaction with its platform.
For reference on the fund performance, between March 2020 and March 2023, Penfold customers averaged 4.29% returns on their funds (before fees). This compares with 3.40% returns on Aviva’s My Future Focus funds, 3.81% on Royal London funds, 2.80% from The People’s Pension and 1.40% on Now Pensions’ funds. Outperforming them all, however, was NEST on 5.22% over the same period.
Skip to Investing Insiders’ James Fox's analysis of Penfold's
Withdrawal fees
There are no fees for transferring in or out of your Penfold account.
Deposit fees
There are no charges for depositing money into your Penfold account.
Minimum deposit
Penfold takes the view that any investment into a pension, however small, is worth doing, so contributions can be whatever you like, starting from £10. This is not mandated, however. If you need to stop making deposits for any length of time, Penfold is happy for you to stop making contributions.
Interest paid on cash
How Penfold manages interest on cash held in accounts is a little bit confusing. They are clear that no interest is paid on the cash temporarily held, on your behalf, through your Penfold Pension. But interest is paid by Penfold’s custodian, Seccl. So you’d think that some interest might be coming your way if you hold uninvested cash in your account. However, it seems that Seccl is currently unable to allocate this interest to all customer fund accounts, so the interest is being distributed to charity instead. Penfold does say they review their position on interest from time to time so things may change but, for now, expect not to receive any.
Please note: all published fees are correct at time of publishing. However, we suggest checking Penfold’s website for the most up-to-date figures.
3.5out of 5
Penfold is designed to make saving for retirement simple. It’s not set up for those who want to choose individual stocks for their portfolio and, as such, there’s not much need to provide advanced research tools for Penfold customers.
If you’re after the kind of
Personally, I think Penfold gets the balance just right: providing clear, detailed information on the differences between its five funds and the various risk levels within funds, but without drowning users in data. For those who want a bit more depth of information, Penfold provides links to the BlackRock and HSBC websites where users can get extensive data on the make-up of funds in each plan invests, and the funds’ historical performance.
Penfold’s approach to investment might be of interest to you if you’re someone who cares about where your money is invested and is ultimately prepared to shop around on that basis. In summary, Penfold’s approach is:
This approach isn’t radically different from what you’ll find most wealth managers recommend for a retirement fund. It’s an evidence-based approach that ensures you don’t put all your eggs in one basket, and helps to ensure losses in one area are balanced with gains elsewhere.
5.0out of 5
When it comes to something as important as saving for your future, you want to know your money is being properly looked after. Penfold offers all the standard reassurances you should expect from a reputable financial services platform:
Remember, though, that investing always involves some level of risk. The value of your pension can go up as well as down, and you could get back less than you put in
4.0out of 5
As you’d expect, Penfold’s educational materials focus on pensions, although there are also some articles and insights on related topics that may interest users such as self-assessment.
It’s useful content – there are guides to pensions which start from the ground up and offer clear explanations and include videos. There are also guides to using the platform.
Penfold aims to cut through the confusion on pensions – and their small library of resources does that pretty well.
3.5out of 5
You can contact Penfold via:
If you’re a customer, you can also use the AI chatbot which I found had the answers to the questions I had, meaning I didn’t need to use the option to connect to a human.
Penfold offers an additional “concierge” service for employers. This 1:1 support can help with onboarding staff and scheme implementation. This is a real plus point for Penfold and something Penfold’s business customers feedback positively on. Note, however, these support agents cannot give financial advice.
Penfold has a “Great” score on Trustpilot – 4.2 at the time of writing – based on almost 900 reviews. Recent reviews cite delays getting through. However, my experience of phoning customer services was very positive. I was given the option to hang up instead of waiting and receive a call back on the number I’d called on. I was called back just 15 minutes later and the agent was extremely helpful, answering each of my enquiries.
5.0out of 5
Account opening
It could not be more simple with Penfold. The whole journey took me just five minutes to complete, and required just my personal details; no bank account details or documentation.
Watch this video to view the Penfold account opening processes:
*Insert Video
Closing your account
Penfold does not charge for closing your account. However, some recent customer reviews on Trustpilot are very negative about how long it takes for accounts to be closed and funds transferred.
Transferring accounts
Penfold does not charge fees for transferring over to another provider. Penfold say that, on average, it takes around 4-8 weeks for a pension to be transferred, assuming that there are no complications involved (ie. policy number not matching). Some users on Trustpilot, however, report long delays getting transfers actioned, although this could be caused by hold-ups on the side of the old pension provider.
Penfold and PensionBee both provide ‘smartphone pensions’ – meaning they offer easy access, easy management, online-only pensions that are attractive to personal savers, the self-employed and company Directors. So how do they compare?
Although both offer private pensions, they are slightly different types of private pension: Penfold offers a Self-Invested Personal Pension (SIPP) whereas PensionBee offers a personal pension. The difference usually comes in how much control you have over the investment side of the pension. A SIPP allows for much more flexible investing and gives you the most control over where your money is invested. It can extend to allowing you to pick the individual funds or stocks you want to invest your pension funds into. A personal pension is generally managed for you and all you’ll do is pick a plan that aligns with your feelings on risk and your stage of life (ie how close you are to retirement). With Penfold’s SIPP, however, there really isn’t much choice so there’s not much of a difference between the two providers. If you want full freedom to build and manage the individual investment opportunities within your portfolio, it’s worth looking at the SIPPs provided by AJ Bell, Fidelity or InvestEngine.
With Penfold, your choices are between five different plans. PensionBee offers a choice of eight plans , which, ironically, means you’re actually getting more choice with PensionBee, albeit far less in both cases than what I’d consider a true SIPP. So, both options are well-suited to people who don’t feel qualified to be making regular decisions about the markets and how their money should be invested in them, and who prefer to leave it up to professional money managers.
Both provide a free pension tracking and consolidation service, and both automatically add the 25% tax relief due to savers paying the basic rate of tax. (You’ll still get it if you pay higher rate tax, but you’ll need to claim your higher rate element yourself in your tax return.)
Penfold also offers a great little workplace pension plan for employers that’s well-worth checking out if you have a small business and need to get auto-enrolment sorted.
On price, both providers charge by way of one annual fee, so let’s compare a pension pot of £100k or less. With PensionBee, you’d pay one annual fee of 0.50 – 0.95%, depending on the type of plan you choose. With Penfold, that fee would be 0.75% (or 0.88% for the Sharia plan). It’s therefore possible to come in with lower fees at PensionBee if you choose the default plan or the ‘Tracker’ plan. If you want to invest £100k or less into a Sharia plan or sustainable option, it’s cheaper with Penfold.
For pots over that £100k mark, Penfold starts to become the cheaper option across the board.
On portfolio performance, PensionBee has historically performed slightly better than Penfold, but as Penfold is newer to the market, we have fewer years of data to observe fund performance. It’s also worth noting that neither provider has outperformed the industry average. If historic performance matters to you (and it should), then check out Moneybox *internal link.
If you want an easy-to-administer workplace pension for your employees, then Penfold is a good option. It’s free for employers to set up and offers a choice of five pension fund options for employees. It’s not the cheapest option for employees though who will be paying an annual management fee of 0.75%.
Yes, you can start to draw money from your Penfold pension once you reach the age of 55 (57 from 2028). It is illegal to remove money from your pension before that age unless you have suffered from a severe illness and are unable to continue working, or have a life expectancy of less than 12 months. If you want to transfer your Penfold pension to another provider, that’s free to do should take between 4-8 weeks although some users claim it can take much longer than this.
Yes, Penfold is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK and is a member of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) meaning that in the event it was to become insolvent, your savings would be protected up a value of £85,000 per account.
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