[Beta] Penny ⚡️ Find Your Pensions - Feedback & Discussion

An API would be amazing but it doesn’t exist yet.

That’s why we have to ask for your previous jobs. Then, we automatically cross-reference your previous job (eg Tesco) with the government’s pension scheme database (publicly available) to find your pension scheme (eg Aviva). And then we automatically send an email to relevant pension company (Aviva).

Hope that makes sense. It’s quite a hefty backend. The govt is trying to make pension companies develop a universal API to make getting info instant, but until the API arrives (latest forecasts are 2025 :scream:) it’s a 3-5 day process.

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I’ve just given it a whirl. I’ve only had 3 jobs, the first didn’t have a pension, the second I’m sure they closed when I left and my current one, but lets find out!

I think the chat-bot is really good but after I’ve given my details, it goes quiet. No “Thanks, that’s great, you’re awesome, we’ll check back if we need more details” etc.

Oh hang on, I was too eager and gave it all in a format the bot couldn’t understand. Maybe that could have been clearer.

But otherwise fairly simple.

Thanks @Revels, and everyone else who’s given this a whirl :innocent:

Any critiques / comments are great. Is there anything you didn’t like?

We know we haven’t got this thing perfect, but with your help hopefully we can do.

Definitely disagree - I’ve just got rid of my Facebook account and a lot of my friends are doing the same (we’re all under 26). Would much rather keep everything about my personal financial life on a separate app rather than give it to Facebook.

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For what it’s worth, I’d always want an app.

Something in your browser gets lost and has no permanency.
Facebook is just gross and I’d rather have as little connected to it as possible.

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One thing I noticed was I typed one of my previous employers (two words) and it only confirmed searching for the first word

i.e Green King only searched for Green

Minus that, I’m excited for what will come back

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I really don’t want my phone full of apps that I rarely use. I’m quite happy with using my password manager to store passwords, can now also do notifications through the web browser too.

One small complaint, I didn’t need to know that you’re “making good progress” at 4:37am

Luckily my phone is on do not disturb at night but I wouldn’t have been happy if you’d woken me up. Chat bot needs to sleep!

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It’s a really slick, easy interface.

I’ll wait to see what Penny finds!

Trying myself seems okay so far.

Not sure what platform you mean? As far as I’m aware not an option for me on iOS anyway.

I’ve got 400 something apps. My phone has enough storage space, everything is neatly in folders, and whenever I need something, I get the superior experience of a dedicated app.

I’m on Android. Although I do get around to organising the apps into folders, I often find I’m running out of space, and find the phone slows down with more apps on it, whilst clearing out apps that I don’t use helps to speed it up. More of an issue on lower end phones.

I also tend to do larger/longer term finance things on the computer.

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Penny found one of my pensions in October.

Still waiting for an update.

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So basically a fancy app for something that I can already do on Gov.uk, or am I missing something.

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Well yes, you don’t have to search and email the pension companies… that’s the point.

You can boil most apps down to “something I could just do myself” :neutral_face:

It’s true. Without Facebook I’d have to develop photographs of my food and show them people in the street :grin:

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Would using a Polaroid camera be classed as cheating?

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Hi @Revels :wave: Penny Co-founder here

The Monzo post in September was for Penny’s “alpha” product launch. Your feedback was super helpful. You tried the bare-bones, super-early Penny. We could only find about of 50% pensions :exploding_head:

9 months later… We can find nearly 100% of pensions :white_check_mark:

We’re also FCA-authorised and an app (not a FB chatbot) :calling:

If you still want us to find your pensions, here’s the Penny app :slightly_smiling_face:

Thanks again to all you early testers from the Monzo community :pray:
–Nate

Hey Dave, yeh the “Pension Tracing Service” is the government’s answer to the lost pensions problem… but it only covers about 20% of all pension pots. And you still have to email/call up the pension provider… The government is now building the pension dashboard but it won’t be ready until 2025.

So that’s why we built Penny.

Thanks for your feedback btw, always good to hear what fintech people think :+1: