Moneybox Personal Pension: fees and how to open one

A Moneybox Personal Pension is a personal pension you open and run yourself through the Moneybox app. It is a defined contribution pot: what you get at retirement depends on what you and any employer have paid in and how the investments have performed, not on a salary formula. You need to be a UK resident aged 18 or over with a National Insurance number to open one, and you cannot touch the money until the minimum pension age, currently 55 and rising to 57 from 2028¹.

The cost works in two layers. Moneybox charges an annual service fee on the value of your pension, calculated daily and charged at the end of each month, and the funds themselves carry a fund fee. The service fee rate depends on which funds you hold: it is lower if you stick to Moneybox's own funds and higher if you pick funds from other providers. There are no fees for opening the pension, paying in, or transferring an old pension across².

Moneybox is not a bank, and it does not give personal financial advice or make recommendations based on individual circumstances. It states that it strongly recommends using Pension Wise's free and impartial guidance service, or seeking financial advice, before making a choice².

What it is and who it is for

A personal pension is a defined contribution scheme: a pot based on what you or your employer paid in⁵. Anyone can save into one, and they tend to be particularly useful if you are self-employed or not in a workplace scheme, because there is no employer to enrol you into anything⁶. Moneybox's version sits alongside its other products, which include a Cash ISA, an Open Access Cash ISA, a Stocks & Shares ISA, and Lifetime ISAs in both cash and stocks and shares form⁷.

The pension is aimed at people who want to run their retirement saving from a phone. Moneybox is an exclusively app-based platform, and its pension is opened and managed the same way⁸. The provider says more than 1.9 million people save with it, and it holds a 4.4 out of 5 rating on Trustpilot based on 5,098 reviews⁷. Those are the provider's own figures.

It is not the only kind of pension you might hold. A workplace scheme is chosen by your employer, which picks the provider and invests your contributions⁹. A group personal pension is an individual contract between you and a provider your employer has chosen¹⁰. A Moneybox Personal Pension is neither: it is your own arrangement, and nothing about it depends on an employer.

How it works

You pay in, Moneybox invests the money in the funds you choose, and the pot grows or shrinks with those investments. The provider offers a curated range of funds designed to match different attitudes to risk, plus a choice of global or socially responsible tracker funds¹. Its three main risk-based options are described plainly: Cautious is mainly invested in bonds, with lower risk and lower potential returns; Adventurous is mainly invested in stocks, with higher risk and higher potential returns; Balanced sits in between¹. Moneybox's own funds are offered in partnership with and actively managed by Amundi¹¹.

When you reach the minimum pension age you can take lump sums or ad-hoc withdrawals while the rest of your money stays invested¹. That is one way of taking a pension, not the only one, and Moneybox states that not all retirement options are available through its pension³. Money held in a pension usually cannot be claimed by anyone you owe money to, even if you are declared bankrupt or in a formal debt repayment plan, but money you have taken out can be¹².

Moneybox also runs a pension search tool. It needs the name of your old employer and the dates you worked there to look for old pensions¹. That is a way of finding pots you have lost track of, and it is separate from the pension itself.

How the fees and charges work

There are two charges to understand, and they work differently.

The service fee is Moneybox's own charge for running the pension. It is an annual percentage of the value of your pension, calculated daily and charged at the end of each month². The rate is not the same for everything you can hold. If you stick to Moneybox's own funds, the service fee is lower and is capped at a set amount each year. If you choose funds from other providers, the service fee is higher, applies to the first £100,000 at the higher rate and a lower rate above that, and has no annual cap². The provider's site has today's figures.

The fund fee is what the fund manager charges for running the investments. For Moneybox's own funds this is a set percentage. For other providers' funds it is set by the provider, so it varies².

Put together, Moneybox illustrates the difference with a worked example: its own funds cost £4.40 a year for every £1,000 invested, assuming a 0.15% service fee plus a 0.29% fund fee, compared with £7.40 a year for every £1,000 invested in non-Moneybox funds, assuming an equivalent 0.29% fund fee with the higher 0.45% service fee¹¹. Those are the provider's own illustrations and the rates behind them can change; the provider's site has today's figures.

There are no fees for opening the pension, paying in, or transferring an old pension to Moneybox². Personal pension providers generally charge for starting and running a pension, and usually take a percentage from the pension fund, so a percentage-based service fee is the normal shape of the market rather than something unusual⁵.

Moneybox has published a comparison of its annual service fee against other major UK providers as at 20 April 2026². That comparison is the provider's own and is not reproduced here.

Who can apply and how to apply

The eligibility rule is short. You can open a Moneybox Personal Pension if you are a UK resident aged 18 or over with a National Insurance number². There is no minimum age above 18 and no minimum amount to start: Moneybox advertises signing up in minutes from just £1⁷.

Applying is done in the app. Moneybox is an exclusively app-based platform, so there is no branch counter and no paper form⁸. You will need your National Insurance number to hand, and if you are transferring an old pension in, the details of the scheme you are moving from.

Two restrictions matter before you start a transfer:

• Moneybox cannot accept a transfer from a pension your employer is currently paying into¹.
• It cannot accept transfers from a pension associated with your current employer².

If you are moving a defined contribution pot from an old job, that is the ordinary case and it is usually straightforward. If you are thinking about moving a defined benefit or final salary pension, the position is different: those schemes pay a set amount every year in retirement based on your salary and how long you worked for your employer, and are not dependent on investments¹⁰. Transfers out of them are a separate subject with their own rules and risks, and the FSCS does not cover defined benefit schemes themselves¹⁴.

How your money is protected

Pension providers are required to ringfence pension savings, which means that if the company went bust, your pension would be safe⁹. That is the first layer of protection and it applies to defined contribution pensions generally, not just this one.

The Financial Services Compensation Scheme is the second layer, and it comes with conditions. The FSCS states that it can only protect you if the Financial Conduct Authority has authorised your pension provider¹⁶. Moneybox is not a bank, and its savings products do not work in the same way as a bank account⁴. Where protection applies, Moneybox states that investments held within a Moneybox Stocks and Shares ISA are protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme up to £85,000, and that its Cash ISA and Junior ISA are protected by the scheme⁴.

Where FSCS protection stops is worth knowing. It does not include defined benefit pension schemes themselves; the Pension Protection Fund protects those¹⁵. The Pension Protection Fund is a statutory fund that protects members of defined benefit schemes if the scheme's sponsor becomes insolvent, and it pays compensation to people who have a defined benefit or final salary pension with a company that has gone bankrupt¹⁷. If you hold a Moneybox Personal Pension, that is a defined contribution arrangement, so the Pension Protection Fund is not the relevant backstop.

The FSCS publishes a set of questions it suggests asking if you are getting a pension or thinking of changing it, including whether FSCS protects your pension, how much of your pot is protected, whether there are other protections available, and whether a transfer in would also be protected¹⁴. Those are worth putting to any provider before you move money.

Problems, complaints and getting help

Start with Moneybox. If you are not satisfied with the response, the Financial Ombudsman Service can look at complaints about a workplace pension, personal pension or annuity as long as the business is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, and it is a free, independent service¹⁸. It can tell a provider to put things right, for example by paying compensation into your pension plan or straight to you, and it may also ask for compensation for distress or inconvenience²⁰.

The Pensions Ombudsman is the other route. It can look at complaints about the administration of personal and occupational pension schemes²². Its member guidance covers how to complain about a pension problem, common complaint topics, who can complain, and what it can and cannot do, including overpayments, ill-health pensions, death benefits and incorrect pension information²³. The three most common topics of new pension complaints were contributions, retirement benefits and calculation of benefits²⁴.

For scale, the Financial Ombudsman Service recorded 931 complaints about personal pensions in the first quarter of 2026/27²⁰. In the year to 8 July 2024 it recorded 5,616 complaints about pensions in total²¹.

If your concern is about a workplace pension rather than this one, you can complain to MoneyHelper or the Pensions Ombudsman about how it is managed, and The Pensions Regulator takes reports of concerns about workplace pensions online, by phone, email or post⁹.

Free, impartial help is available. MoneyHelper is a free, impartial, government-backed service with information about pensions, and its retirement guidance tool asks a small number of questions and matches your circumstances with the guidance and tools most likely to be useful, producing a retirement action plan²⁶. Pension Wise offers free guidance on your options, and Moneybox itself recommends using it before making a choice³.