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Overall Score 3

Overall Score

Our View

PensionBee was set up in 2014 by CEO Romina Savova who had such a terrible experience moving her old workplace pension that she decided there had to be a better way. Today there are over 538,000 people using the service...

What accounts are available?

As the name suggests, PensionBee is all about pensions, which explains why they appear to score lowly here. That’s because their focus is on the Self Invested Personal Pension (SIPP) they run, rather than other accounts like ISAs and GIAs. On the face of it, that restricts choice, but the point here is that you’re getting a pension specialist. Not only that, their big thing is pensions consolidation. That means getting all your old, probably smaller, pensions in one place to make that money work harder for your retirement.

ISA
Junior ISA
Lifetime ISA
Flexible ISA
SIPP (Accumulation)
SIPP (Drawdown)
Junior SIPP
GIA
Score 1

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What kind of investments can I make?

PensionBee offer 9 different investment portfolios – but what marks them out as different is that they aren’t just 1 to 8 with a socially responsible option. Yes there is an SRI portfolio, but there’s also things like ‘Future World’ that invests in companies that pledge to move to an environmentally-friendly economy; or ‘Sharia’ which Invests your money only into Sharia-compliant companies. The most popular ‘plan’ as they call them is the tailored one which invests your money differently as you go through life, moving your money into safer investments as you get older.

Number of ready made portfolios
9
Ethical/sustainable/
socially responsible
Pick your own individual funds available?
Score 3

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What account features are available?

Pensionbee offer 9 different investment portfolios – but what marks them out as different is that they aren’t just 1 to 8 with a socially responsible option. Yes there is an SRI portfolio, but there’s also things like ‘Future World’ that invests in companies that pledge to move to an environmentally-friendly economy; or ‘Sharia’ which Invests your money only into Sharia-compliant companies. The most popular ‘plan’ as they call them is the Tailored one which Invests your money differently as you go through life, moving your money into safer investments as you get older.

Risk questionnaire to decide portfolio
Round-up investing
Monthly investing
Auto rebalance
Advice
Help to learn investing
Projected returns available
Score 1

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How can I access my account and get support?

There are actually three ways to contact PensionBee – you can call, and there’s a chat app on every page, but you can also email in too. You have a dedicated BeeKeeper who’s on hand to answer any queries you may have. Once you’re signed up then you can access your account through the website, or via an app available for both iOS and Android smartphones.

Chat app
Telephone support
Web access
App access
Score 5

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How much does it cost?

The platform fee for PensionBee is at the higher end of the range, but the costs of the funds they use are incredibly low meaning the overall cost comes in at a decent level when compared against the other DIWM offerings.

Platform fee
0.70%
Investment costs
0.03%
Subscription Fee
£0
Total
0.73%
Score 5

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