Exclusive: Penfold closes £7m Series A led by Bridford Group

Digital pensions provider Penfold has raised a £7m Series A funding round led by Bridford Group, the investment group which also backs Lendable and NorthVolt, AltFi can exclusively reveal.

The round comprises £5m from Bridford, a £1m personal investment from Jeremy Coller, the chair and chief investment officer of Coller Capital, and a further £1m from Penfold’s recent Crowdcube crowdfunding round that attracted 900 retail investors.

Penfold said the funding will be used to expand its workplace pension division, which has so far signed up more than 150 businesses since launching only ten months ago, overing some 7,000 individual staff from scale-ups like Cuvva, Elvie and Attest.

“Following that early success we are racing to really scale up our B2B distribution, so selling direct to businesses and also via intermediaries for our workplace pension,” Penfold’s co-founder Chris Eastwood told AltFi.

The company will also be increasing its headcount from 30 to around 50 by the end of 2022, with hiring across all departments but with a particular focus on sales and marketing.

While Penfold started out in 2018 as an app offering pensions for freelancers, which it still offers, but has now branched out to offer workplace pension services.

“What sets us apart from other modern providers or digital pension providers is that we serve both markets, because ultimately we know that people move from job to job and they move from employment to self-employment, and what's important is a flexible pension that can stick with you for life,” added Eastwood.

Penfold says it now has more than 60,000 customers who have either taken out its personal, self-employed or workplace pension products, more than doubling its customer numbers in 2021 alone.

While the stock markets have been increasingly volatile in recent months, Eastwood said Penfold has yet to see any big changes in customer behaviour.

“On the individual side there has been some caution around committing large amounts of money into their pension, but still no impact on the [level] of pension transfer activity we’re seeing,” Eastwood added.