In our continuing search for the best pension providers, the name Wealthify kept popping up. But who are Wealthify pensions aimed at and are they any good?
Wealthify in a nutshell
Wealthify is a UK robo-advisor investment platform and offers pensions, ISAs and general investment accounts. It started operating in 2016 and was acquired by Aviva in 2017.
The platform offers 5 investment styles reflecting levels of risk, ranging from “Cautious” to “Adventurous”. It also has two investment themes – “Original” or “Ethical”.
As a robo-advisor, once you make a choice on theme and style, Wealthify uses low-cost passive investments such as ETFs and mutual funds. There are flat fees of 0.60% on investments plus fund charges of around 0.75%, or 1.3% for ethical funds.
To open a new pension account you will need an initial investment minimum of £50. Wealthify also offers a consolidation service to bring any of your previous pension pots into one place.
Opening a pension with Wealthify
The platform design targets people with little investment experience. It does this for pensions very well.
The site and app are clean and largely jargon free spaces. For someone making their first tentative steps into investing, information and guides are easy to read and find.
Before you get going, the platform asks about your initial investment amount and future deposit plans. From there its calculator provides good graphic indicators of 3 potential outcomes for your pension pot at retirement age including a pessimistic and optimistic forecast.
It then provides information about the fees you’ll pay and a chart outlining how inflation could impact on growth rates. Finally, details on where your investment will go into includes the investment type, region, and investment funds.
Once you complete these steps, you must fill out a “suitability questionnaire”. This is to ensure users are aware of the risks that investments can go up and down, and to check that you are financially able to commit to your plan. The company clarifies that this is part of its FCA/KYC approval process and reserves the right to block your application if it deems you unsuitable.
The pros and cons of Wealthify
When weighing up the advantages and disadvantages of the platform, much will depend on the financial position and knowledge of anyone opening a pension with Wealthify.
Much like robo-advisor rival Nutmeg, the platform aims to simplify the process of investing your pension for you. Here it truly does excel if simplicity is the name of the game.
There are fewer options than Nutmeg, making a final investment decision easier to come to. This also means its transparent fees are easier to navigate with fewer variables. The fees themselves compare favourably with market rivals.
The flipside of this simplicity is that there is a lack of information some might expect, or want, to see. While it is true that information on which funds are invested in, it is hard to find any useful benchmarking or comparative data. If you wanted to know how they all performed, you would need to look for yourself.
On the positive side, the customer service offered ranges from bots online to people on the phone. Knowing that you can contact a human to discuss any concerns about your pension is always a bonus, and Wealthify have Saturday mornings covered on top of the working week.
Wealthify also regularly have deals offering to match investments between £50-1000 in the first 12 months if you remain a customer. You can check sites such as Martin Lewis’s Money Saving Expert for the latest deals.
Who is a Wealthify pension plan for?
It all comes back down to simplicity. If you do not have a large enough pension pot to consider paying for financial advice, today’s robo-advisors offer low fees and easy to navigate investment options.
In this category, Wealthify generally looks like a better option than Nutmeg. This would seem to be backed up by independent TrustPilot reviews rating it at 4.0 (against Nutmeg’s 3.7).
The fees are favourable with other similar platforms which makes them attractive to pots up to £50,000. For larger pension pots, completely flat fees services such as interactive investor will offer better rates.
Finally, it is worth noting that while Wealthify continues to operate independently, having the backing of insurance giant Aviva is a positive. This is particularly true for ethical investors who may be put off by JP Morgan’s attachment to Nutmeg.
Final thoughts
If you have a small to medium-sized pension pot and little-to-no investment experience, Wealthify is worth looking at. The site’s simplicity is easy to navigate, and the graphics are easy to interpret. Transparent fees should remove any nasty surprises and are comparable with rival platforms.
For anyone with a larger pot, those fees will start to add up and there are better options. If you don’t have a larger pension yet but feel more comfortable in your investment knowledge, there are also platforms with a wider range of options.
As always, much will come down to investment confidence and your user-experience preferences which can be subjective. We would always recommend you do your own research and look at a range of providers before deciding.
Author: Mike Davies
You can find our reviews of other pensions providers below.
Nutmeg pensions – low cost at a price | Disruption Banking
Who is the Aviva pension plan best for? | Disruption Banking
Is Interactive Investor the Best Pension and Investment App? | Disruption Banking
Is PensionBee a Good Pension Plan to Invest In? (disruptionbanking.com)
Disclaimer:
The Editorial Team at #DisruptionBanking have taken all precautions to ensure that no persons or organizations have been adversely affected or offered any sort of financial advice in this Article. This Article is most definitely not Financial Advice.
