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Moneybox Pension Review

as of 25/03/2021 at 4:17 pm

Our View

Nice, easy to use, simple to open an account. A dream for those who want to save without the accompanying jargon and science. But we do have some serious quibbles. Fees are not as transparent as they should be, and the service is not that cheap for some investors with smaller balances. Actual information on the investments themselves is hard to access. But on balance this is a well-executed service and fills a niche. Not an obvious pensions player – best for those who want a simple service in the saving up phase only.

Our Pension Rating

Recommended For

Beginner Investor

In a nutshell

Truly mobile-first

Super engaging

Limited investment choice

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You Say

Your overall rating

Based on 47 reviews

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We love customer reviews because it’s the only way we can check the user experience across a meaningful sample of independent people. We collect all of your reviews and use them to calculate the overall “You Say” score for each provider. We also use this customer rating in our analysis, to make sure we’re not rewarding companies which look good online but fail to deliver in practice. Finally we use the aggregated data in our research and consultancy with providers, so we can tell them what customers love or hate and help them to improve.

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What to Expect

  1. Best Buy 2021
  2. Mobile and apps
  3. Behind the scenes

What's good about it?

  • Engaging and easy to use app.
  • Round ups encourage extra saving on a regular and small basis.
  • Great for beginners and those who want to feel that they can invest without corresponding huge sums of money.

This is one of the few investment services which truly feels mobile-first. It is slick and easy to sign up and add money to your investments. The only downside is that if you want to find out more information about the underlying investment choices it is not that easy to do so.

There are three main investment options for customers: Cautious, Balanced or Adventurous. These portfolios are now more diverse; made up of different funds, where they used to be a blend of a select three.

The Lifetime ISA and Junior ISA are interesting additions to the service. Just be careful with Lifetime ISAs and picking the more adventurous options - be sure your timeframes are aligned.

Investment Choice

Products

Stocks and Shares ISA

Junior ISA

Lifetime ISA

Investment Account

Pension

Investments available

Investment help

Robo advice / ready-made portfolios

Drawdown

We do not currently have sufficient feedback from investors on the drawdown experience to review the service for those in retirement. Please help us by leaving your review.

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The 'Geeky' Details

Provider details

The Robo-adviser that has taken the market by storm, Moneybox was the first to offer the idea of rounding up your regular investment based on what you spend on a linked account. It encourages people to build their wealth – they don’t just manage it.

The Moneybox Pension currently has three investment options: The Fidelity World Index Fund, Old Mutual World ESG Index fund and the BlackRock LifePath fund. All three are passive, cheap options with the BlackRock fund notably a ‘Lifestyle’ fund that changes the risk level of your investments as you get closer to your retirement date.

Moneybox’s platform fees for their SIPP differ to their ISA fees; there is no regular £1 per month subscription fee. Instead, it is a 0.45% charge on the first £100,000 in the account. This is reduced to a 0.15% charge for any balance above £100k. You’ll also be charged the fund provider fee, for example the Fidelity option is just 0.12%.

Moneybox do not provide any drawdown options currently, so anyone approaching retirement would need to transfer their pension to a different provider, should they wish to access it. Not a pensions specialist, this option is best for those for whom pensions remains ‘a bit on the side’.

Important Facts & Figures

Provider Size:

Small start-up but has some big friends under the bonnet

Your Questions

"I've got a Stock and Shares ISA with Moneybox. I recently invested a £5000 lump sum with them, and I'm making regular weekly investments of £75. When I invested the £5000, the share price was quite high based on the performance of the fund. I'm just wondering whether I made a mistake investing the lump sum in one go, and whether I should have drip fed it into the account in the same way as my weekly deposits? If so, should I withdraw and start to drip feed it back in?"

Tim, West Midlands

05/04/2019

Read our reply

Your question

I've got a Stock and Shares ISA with Moneybox. I recently invested a £5000 lump sum with them, and I'm making regular weekly investments of £75. When I invested the £5000, the share price was quite high based on the performance of the fund. I'm just wondering whether I made a mistake investing the lump sum in one go, and whether I should have drip fed it into the account in the same way as my weekly deposits? If so, should I withdraw and start to drip feed it back in?

Tim, West Midlands

05/04/2019

Mark Dampier says

Hi Tim,

There is a myth around drip-feeding into an investment that it is always the better plan.

First, many investors don’t have large sums to invest, and would rather invest monthly amounts of say £100. This is an excellent way of building up an investment pot over many years.

Some investors who have a lump sum to invest also like to drip feed this money in.

It is more about investors emotions and loss aversion.

Many don’t like the idea of investing £100,000 all at once. They worry that the market might suddenly fall.

Some may divide their sum into four, and deposit the investment in stages. If this gives you peace of mind, then that’s fine.

However as markets generally go up more than they go down, statistically you are more likely to lose out by drip feeding a lump sum in the market, than investing it all at once. Of course there are exceptions like 2008, but they are near impossible to forecast!

Finally, don’t mess around with the investment once you have made it!

 

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