90. PensionBee

Founders: Romi Savova and Jonathan Lister
Founded: November 2014 (Launched January 2016)
Website: www.pensionbee.com

Even as a finance professional working for Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, Romi Savova found moving her pension from a previous employer a very complicated process. After finding out she wasn’t alone, she decided to come up with a solution to help people take back control of their retirement savings.

Alongside Jonathan Lister she launched PensionBee: an online pension manager that helps mid-career savers who have changed their jobs at least once manage their pensions online. Users can find old pensions for free and combine them into one of PensionBee’s three plans – which are managed by global investment managers State Street and BlackRock – with the company taking a portion of the annual management fee. Fees range from 0.5% to 0.7%, whereas PensionBee claims the average UK pension is in the range of 1.0% of assets annually.

Having just launched in January this year, the founders say they knew they were on to something when they saved their very first customer “thousands of pounds in pension fees” and the next 12 months should see the company secure 3,000 new customers. The ambitious business also has plans to grow its full-time staff from eight to 17 and to make some “exciting improvements” to its product. With pensions on everyone’s lips thanks to the new auto-enrolment rules, PensionBee looks set to make waves this year.