Penfold: transforming pensions

Penfold is a challenger pension company that allows customers to consolidate and manage their pensions through a single app.

At a time when people are looking for flexible, customer-focused tech products, pensions remain stuck in the dark ages. Penfold is changing that. By providing a smooth experience and harnessing modern technology, it offers a customer-first pension app for the employed and self-employed alike.

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Using TrueLayer enabled us to create a seamless payment experience for customers paying into their pensions.

Stuart Robinson

CTO & Co-founder

The challenge

Before offering TrueLayer’s instant bank payments, customers could only pay into their pensions through direct debits and manual bank transfers. Both options added friction to the payment process, requiring customers to take extra steps just to fund their accounts.

With direct debits, customers had to go through a lengthy process to set up a mandate with their banks. In some cases, they had to wait up to seven days before their money reached their accounts. Ultimately, the delays detracted from the fast, easy experience Penfold sought to provide.

Manual bank transfers presented their own challenges. They required customers to enter payment details from their online banking into the Penfold app.

Not only did this create a poor experience on mobile, but it also led to customers entering incorrect reference details or omitting them altogether. These mistakes meant that Penfold couldn’t reconcile the payment to the customer accounts, creating additional work for the company’s operations team and frustrating customers who expected the payment to be instant.

The Penfold team wanted a better way for their customers to fund their pensions. Using TrueLayer Payments, they were able to do so.

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Overall, we had a great experience integrating with TrueLayer. They had good developer docs and support, and their developer console was easy to use.

Harry Wynn-Williams

Senior Software Engineer

The solution

TrueLayer’s product design, documentation and developer experience was a clear differentiator for Penfold. The team began using TrueLayer Payments to accept account deposits. The integration process was straightforward and took less than two weeks.

Immediately after integrating with TrueLayer, Penfold saw an immediate improvement in its customer experience. Unlike direct debits and manual bank transfers, TrueLayer Payments allowed customers to contribute to their pensions in a few short steps. The authorisation process was painless, and Penfold can immediately reconcile payments, heavily reducing back office work.

Partnering with TrueLayer also allowed Penfold to introduce new value-added features for customers. Using TrueLayer’s Data API, Penfold was able to use customer data to calculate monthly contribution rates for those with irregular incomes. The company also implemented a rules engine that analyses customers’ income and prompts them to pay into their pension at the right moment.

Today, Penfold’s open banking integration gives its customers more flexibility and freedom. Instead of having to wait until the end of the month, they can pause, adjust or top up their pension whenever they like.

This was especially useful at the end of a tax year, when customers wanted to hit their remaining pension allowance. While competitors had to solicit payments weeks or months in advance, Penfold could allow its customers to pay right up to the deadline. Thanks to TrueLayer, there was no last-minute panic, just a great customer experience.

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Since we've deployed the integration into production, the experience has been painless. The stability and uptime have been excellent, and the engineering team haven't had to deal with any maintenance headaches.

Stuart Robinson

CTO & Co-founder

The results

Since integrating with TrueLayer, the process of paying into a Penfold account has improved significantly. Payment speed has increased dramatically, and adoption has been strong. The end result: a better overall experience for Penfold’s customers.

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Truelayer has removed the friction from handling payments and let our engineers focus on building a great product for our customers. We would definitely recommend it to other businesses.

Stuart Robinson

CTO & Co-founder