Taking PensionBee Public: An interview with Romi Savova

In an exclusive interview for AltFi’s Digital Wealth State of the Market Report 2020, PensionBee’s CEO and founder talks IPOs, hyper-growth and the rise of ethical pensions.

This is an excerpt from AltFi’s Digital Wealth State of the Market Report 2020, which is available for free here.

The biggest competitor in the pensions industry doesn’t come from a shiny new fintech, or an entrenched incumbent or even a ‘big tech’ Silicon Valley rival like Apple or Amazon. 

No, according to Romi Savova, the 34-year-old founder of PensionBee, her biggest rival is inertia—or a lack thereof. 

“The fact that most people still find pensions so boring and so complicated, that it's easier to do nothing,” she says. 

Indeed, the ignored desk drawer filled with unread pension statements from previous employers is a common problem, and one only accelerating as auto-enrolment leaves a muddled mess of pension pots for the next generation to deal with. 

Inertia is also PensionBee’s greatest ally. The problem of consolidating pensions, which Savova says affects somewhere in the range of 10m and 15m people in the UK, has enabled the entrepreneur to build a business believed to be valued in the region of £300m. Still a minnow among the UK’s multi-trillion-pound pensions sector, and even larger wealth management industry, but a fast-swimming minnow.

All things being well and market conditions permitting, PensionBee in early November announced that it is aiming to list on the London Stock Exchange at the end of 2021 or early 2022, a phenomenal success for the just six-year-old startup.

Savova said the news is “momentous” in the history of her company, “it's still early days but it's nice to put the news out publicly, because we are working on it.”

Currently PensionBee is still in the preparatory phase and has yet to appoint bank advisers, although by the time you read this that might have changed. From a compliance standpoint the CEO is currently restricted from how much she can talk about PensionBee’s IPO plans, although admits “we obviously want to shout from the rooftops”.

What Savova can discuss is her company’s meteoric rise over the past six years, and record-breaking growth over the last 12 months...

Want to keep going? Read the full interview in AltFi’s Digital Wealth State of the Market Report, out now!