PensionBee Q2 2026: AUA hits £8.6bn as UK profits scale

Strong growth, with the UK business doing the heavy lifting

PensionBee's second-quarter update delivered a healthy combination of customer growth, rising assets and improving profitability.

Group assets under administration, or AUA, increased by 37% year-on-year to £8.6 billion at 30 June 2026. AUA represents the value of customer pension assets administered through PensionBee's platform and is the company's main revenue driver.

The number of Invested Customers rose by 14% to 327,000, including 12,000 customers added during the quarter. An Invested Customer is someone who has transferred assets or contributed to a PensionBee plan and still has an active balance.

Revenue also grew faster than the customer base. Group quarterly revenue increased by 43% to £13.9 million, while last-twelve-month revenue reached £50.2 million, up 37%.

That suggests PensionBee is not simply adding accounts. It is also benefiting from higher assets, continued transfers and supportive investment markets.

PensionBee's key Q2 figures

Metric	Q2 2026	Q2 2025	Change
Group revenue	£13.9 million	£9.8 million	43%
UK revenue	£14.3 million	£10.1 million	42%
Group adjusted EBITDA	£(0.6) million	£(0.9) million	26% improvement
UK adjusted EBITDA	£0.8 million	£0.3 million	180%
Gross inflows	£464 million	£345 million	35%
Net flows	£272 million	£209 million	30%
Invested Customers	327,000	286,000	14%
AUA	£8.6 billion	£6.3 billion	37%

UK revenue is higher than group revenue because the group figure includes £0.4 million of intercompany eliminations.

Profitability is moving in the right direction

The clearest positive is the progress in UK profitability.

UK adjusted EBITDA increased by 180% to £0.8 million during the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA is a measure of operating profit before items including interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation, share-based payments and expansion costs.

On a last-twelve-month basis, UK adjusted EBITDA rose by 141% to £7.7 million. The corresponding margin improved from 8% to 15%, meaning a greater proportion of revenue is now being converted into adjusted operating earnings.

At group level, last-twelve-month adjusted EBITDA moved from a £0.5 million loss to a £2.7 million profit. The margin improved from negative 1% to positive 5%.

The quarterly group result remained negative, however, with an adjusted EBITDA loss of £0.6 million. This partly reflects continued investment in the US, where the quarterly adjusted EBITDA loss widened from £1.2 million to £1.5 million.

For investors, the central question is whether UK operational leverage can continue to outpace the cost of building the US operation.

Customer inflows remain encouraging

Gross inflows increased by 35% to £464 million, while net flows rose by 30% to £272 million. Net flows represent money transferred or contributed to PensionBee, less withdrawals and transfers out.

Gross outflows increased faster than inflows, rising by 41% to £191 million. That is worth monitoring, although customer retention remained above 95% and the value retention rate was approximately 100%.

For the first six months of 2026, net flows reached £493 million, up 16%. Of this amount, £372 million came from new customers and £121 million from existing customers.

Supportive markets also played a significant role. Market growth and other movements added £712 million to AUA during the first half, compared with £31 million in the equivalent period of 2025. Investors should therefore avoid treating the entire increase in AUA as customer-generated growth.

Marketing is rising, but so is productivity

PensionBee increased UK marketing expenditure by 34% to £4.6 million. Management intends to maintain this higher investment during the remainder of 2026.

The cost per Invested Customer increased from £251 to £263, compared with PensionBee's desired threshold of approximately £250. That is not a dramatic overshoot, but the figure needs watching if marketing spending remains elevated.

There are signs that the business is becoming more efficient elsewhere. Invested Customers per staff member increased by 17% to 1,747. PensionBee said its AI-powered customer service assistant, BeeBot, can now independently resolve more than 50% of live-chat volume.

These productivity gains matter because PensionBee's long-term margin ambitions depend on its technology platform supporting a larger customer base without costs rising at the same rate.

Brand awareness reached a record 62%, while PensionBee reported a 4.6 Trustpilot rating. Its new hybrid app is live on Android, with an iOS launch described as imminent.

The US opportunity remains early and expensive

The US business is still at a formative stage. PensionBee ended the quarter with more than 400 US Invested Customers and $4.8 million of US AUA, compared with $0.9 million a year earlier.

That is strong percentage growth from a very small starting point. It remains far below the company's initial goal of $1 billion of US AUA.

PensionBee invested £1.0 million in US brand awareness during the quarter, up from £0.4 million, although this spending was described as substantially reimbursed by State Street Investment Management.

The strategy combines a direct-to-consumer service with a business-to-business Automatic Rollover IRA offering. The latter targets former employees' 401(k) pension balances, including small involuntary rollovers, larger voluntary rollovers and full plan terminations.

PensionBee is aiming over time to build relationships with 100 intermediaries and approximately 5,000 employers. Activity during the first half reached recordkeepers representing 75% of the market, while intermediaries already referring clients provide access to 1,500 employers.

These targets indicate the scale of the opportunity management sees, but execution is not yet proven. The US operation generated no separately disclosed revenue and recorded a £5.0 million adjusted EBITDA loss over the last 12 months, compared with £3.7 million previously.

What investors should watch next

PensionBee reiterated its ambition to generate more than £100 million of group revenue and an adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 20% by the end of 2029. Longer term, it is targeting more than £250 million of revenue and a margin of approximately 50% by the end of 2034. These objectives assume relative market stability.

The balance sheet provides some room to invest, with group cash of £31 million. However, that was lower than £34 million in Q2 2025.

The update shows a UK business scaling efficiently, with revenue growth, improving margins, high retention and rising productivity. The main counterweights are higher customer acquisition costs, increased outflows, dependence on supportive markets and widening US losses.

Future updates will need to show that elevated marketing expenditure continues to produce attractive inflows, while the US strategy starts converting its pipeline into meaningful assets and revenue. For now, PensionBee's UK operation is providing the strongest evidence that its technology-led model can generate operational leverage at scale.