Glasgow-based pension-focused fintech Guiide hails further funding

Glasgow-based pension advice service Guiide has received a further round of investment, saying the six-figure boost will help it to develop new features on its existing consumer platform.

The free retirement guidance tool says it creates tax-efficient, tailored retirement plans from very limited personal details provided by the user. “This allows users to get the most value from their pension pots and long-term savings as well as reduce the risk of running out of money in retirement.”

It added that the funding boost of about £100,000 comes as it “continues to make retirement planning tools more practical, insightful, easier to use and freely accessible to everyone who does not or cannot access paid retirement advice”. It follows a previous raise announced in December.

The fintech firm aims to develop new features including greater integration and tailoring with partner providers, real-time fund value information, plan tracking and monitoring along with more accurate unique charging comparisons. It will also support wider initiatives to solve specific issues for defined benefit members.

Guiide founder and actuary Kevin Hollister says some of the fintech's new investors have highly relevant, industry-specific experience. Picture: contributed.

Guiide added that additional features for users that wish to provide more detailed information on their existing savings will soon allow live pricing values and tracking on all pension pots entered within Guiide itself.

In addition, following Guiide’s research finding that around 70 per cent of users had no idea of the charges they were currently paying, accurate charging information from existing providers will become accessible via the same information provision.

"This will make it possible to provide an accurate comparison of current expected monetary lifetime charges compared to any partner provider on the Guiide site, given the actual user plan which is built,” the fintech firm said.

The investment will also support ongoing development into specific user journeys for member requested transfers from defined benefit schemes.

Guiide founder and actuary Kevin Hollister said the raise was again unexpected: “We had reached out to a number of parties around integration with other technology systems, and we were particularly pleased that a number of those we spoke to have now chosen to invest personally in Guiide.

"With some of our new investors having highly relevant, industry-specific experience of pension technology in this area, this was especially valuable, given the specialist insight and advice they could provide us with, along with the actual funding.

“This investment enables us to widen our scope further, improve our existing consumer offering and provide further integration to any partners seeking to assist their customers or members in individual and mastertrust defined contribution schemes as well as those with legacy defined benefit schemes.

“As ever, we hope we can provide our technology free to those who want to make their own retirement plan via our site, or by working directly with pension schemes to provide tailored specific assistance to support their members.”

Guiide was built between 2016 and 2019 and has now been tested on users for more than a year. It says it is the product of 25-plus years of professional experience in the pensions space, as well as a “personal understanding of how non-industry people view pensions and retirement” – and now helps nearly 10,000 users a month.

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