Pensionbee CEO Romina Savova has opened up about what sparked her to found the now London-listed platform and revealed what she describes as the big secret behind a successful pension.
The entrepreneur set Pensionbee up almost a decade ago and has overseen its rapid growth after quitting a career in corporate finance after spotting a gap in the market.
A decade since workplace pension schemes were introduced, the battle to encourage employees to merge their pension pots has heated up in recent months, with the likes of Pensionbee facing competition from its rivals and more established providers such as Royal London.
Speaking in the latest episode of City AM‘s Boardroom Uncovered interview series, Savova said: “When I was having conversations with my friends in finance and you would expect them to be very engaged with their personal pensions.
“[But} I discovered that most people didn’t really know where they were, how they were invested, what kind of fees they were paying and, most importantly, what the money could do for them in the future.
“That lack of engagement and control over what was is a critical part of money – it just spoke to me and made realise that we’re going to need some kind of solution to this problem and that’s where Pensionbee came from.”
Top pensions tips from Pensionbee founder
When asked what her top tips would be to creating a successful pension, Savova said: “The first one is to start as soon as you can. There are a lot of mental barriers behind saving for retirement.
“You can’t visualise yourself in retirement perhaps and that makes many of us think ‘I’ll do that later when I have more time’.
“The big secret is that the ‘more time’ phase does not really ever arrive so now is the best time.”
The CEO also opened up about the process of setting up Pensionbee and what prospective founders need to look out for.
She said: “I think you have to take a big of a leap of faith to begin with because all you have on day one is a piece of paper.
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“You have to have a very strong belief in that piece of paper and what you have uncovered.
“The first step for me was to get validation and speaking to those friends and becoming the popular pension person was definitely one way see if there was a market for this.
“Is there a consumer that will want this product – that’s fundamental to everything.
“The second piece is getting other stakeholders and trying to see [whether] technology can sold this problem.
“On our case technology has played a pivotal role in creating something that can serve the mass market.
She added: “I think you have to believe in it very strongly and really know internally that if you can just solve these problems it will work.”