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Bristol fintech Penny is revolutionising pension recovery, having reclaimed over £500m and earned two 2025 SPARKies nominations.
15 July 2025
Bristol-based fintech Penny is on a mission to reunite people with their lost pensions, and they’re making serious waves. With more than £500 million already recovered and two nominations at the 2025 SPARKies Awards — FinTech Business of the Year and Best Place to Work, Aidan Hall, Accountancy Assistant Manager, sat down with David Henderson, Head of Pensions, to find out how they’re driving innovation, building culture, and scaling with purpose.
Penny has been going well since about 2019. Its aim is to help people track down lost pensions, which is a big problem. There are 31 billion in lost pensions out there to date, and Penny has tracked down £500 million of that, which is pretty significant and makes us one of the leading tracers of lost pensions in the UK. We're a small team. There are only seven of us, so it's a pretty scalable business in that sense.
One of the biggest innovations is our pension matching engine. When users request a pension transfer, we ping their info to providers and automate the whole process — identifying mismatches, prompting users, and resolving issues without human input. That automation is a game-changer for what’s traditionally a very manual industry.
It’s huge. Penny has now found over £500 million in lost pensions, £200 million of which was in just the past 12 months. The average pot size we find is about £5,454, but we’ve located some as large as £545k. One user had 15 separate pension pots. It shows how fragmented the system is and how much value we can unlock for people.
Product-market fit and user trust. As of July 2024, Penny has added £80 million in AUM and opened 12,500 accounts year-to-date — up from £50 million and 7,800 accounts in the previous full year. The demand is clearly there.
Some providers are progressive and open to change. But others still rely on outdated processes. Regulation is helping, particularly the Pensions Dashboard initiative, which is forcing data clean-up. We’ve built our tech to be clean from day one, so Penny is well positioned.
It's about challenging the norm, being relentless about user experience, and staying lean and agile. We benchmark ourselves against the best across any industry, not just finance.
It’s recognition of a company culture that truly embodies the modern way of working. We’ve cultivated a motivated, cohesive and low-churn team by focusing on communication, autonomy and shared purpose. We leverage tools like Slack and empower our team. One standout initiative is the team-led “Smashing Silos” meetings, where employees openly discuss challenges they’ve encountered and collaboratively devise solutions.
We apply the same approach to our social side, with the team engaging both virtually and in-person, including examples like VR golf and quarterly meet-ups, which are key to maintaining strong interpersonal bonds that carry over into our daily digital collaboration.
The founders started with a different proposition but quickly saw the bigger opportunity in pensions. Many startups fall in love with the wrong version of their product. We’ve stayed lean and focused on the path to scale and profitability.
Growth, continued product development, and exploring new areas like targeted support and simplified advice, particularly as the FCA opens up consultations. We're also keen to explore how AI and regulated advice frameworks can work together to improve user outcomes.
Be absolutely clear on your proposition. Pivot if needed but then commit. Grow wisely, make use of grant funding, University placements, and freelance developers. And most of all, focus on solving real problems. That’s where momentum comes from.
Penny is shortlisted for FinTech Business of the Year and Best Place to Work at the 2025 SPARKies Awards.
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