Review contents
Beach is an easy to use app for both investing and managing your pension. There's an easy access pot that includes a tax-free ISA, and a pension pot for retirement savings. The investment plans are managed by experts and you can find and combine lost pensions too. Plus, the customer service is excellent.
Planning to get your finances in shape? Beach could be a great option for you. Beach provides two pots, one for general savings (that are invested), called an easy access pot, and a pension pot, for retirement savings. You can use just one, or both together.
Beach provides you with the core foundations to save for your future (super important if you aren’t saving or planning for your financial future), which probably applies to most of the UK (as we’re not taught things like this in school!).
If you were to speak to a financial advisor, they’d typically set you up with the same accounts too (although they’d also provide financial advice too, which Beach doesn’t).
The accounts you can set up are an ISA, to invest, with money made being tax-free (which can be a huge saving over time), and a pension pot to save for retirement (which also has huge tax-saving benefits too, explained below).
Nuts About Money tip: we probably take this for granted in the UK, and most of us don’t make the most of these accounts, but we’re very fortunate to have these accounts to save for our future, not many countries do.
The investments are managed sensibly over time by professional investors from the largest investment company in the world, BlackRock. We’ll cover the investments below.
Essentially, to use Beach, you don’t need to have much knowledge or confidence in investing (we know it’s pretty scary, but is often the best way to grow your money over time). Beach sets you up for lifetime saving in the right way, and all you need to do is add money.
Fast forward a few years and your future self will likely be thanking you a lot. When investing, the earlier you invest, typically the higher chance you have of your money growing significantly over time.
Anyway, if you’ve heard enough already, here’s the Beach website¹ to get started, otherwise, let’s dive into the details.
Yep! Beach is a great option for beginners, those who want to save by investing their money or want to set up a pension.
On the investing side, it probably couldn’t be easier. You add money, and the money is invested sensibly by experts. That’s it. (After reviewing you are happy with everything of course.)
The investments are designed to grow over time in a sensible way. There will be ups and downs along the way, but if all goes to plan, could grow significantly over the years much more than saving cash (based on data, such as from Barclays).
We've put the investment returns (what you earn) from the last few years below.
And, you have the option to save and invest within an ISA, which makes all the money you make tax-free (so it could grow much more over time). We’ll cover the basics of an ISA just below too. If you don’t want to save within an ISA, there’s the option for a standard account where there’s no contribution limits (you might pay tax on the money you make).
Nuts About Money tip: by the way, you can have as many ISAs as you like now. The law has changed. You just have a maximum saving limit of £20,000 per tax year across them all (April 6th to April 5th the following year).
You also have the option to open a pension or transfer a pension to Beach, it's similar to the above, except it’s all within a pension, so ideal for retirement savings. You add money, it’s invested by the experts. Although this time, the investment is matched to your age. The experts adjust the investment as you go through life, so there’s fewer ups and downs by the time you retire. You might be thinking what does this mean? Well it gets a bit complicated but you can find out more on the Beach website¹.
The app itself is easy to use, and easy to understand. You don’t need to know all the ins-and-outs of investing beforehand. The app will guide you through and explain everything as you go. Compared to some pensions it's quick to sign up too.
If Beach sounds interesting, you can download the app on the Beach website¹.
Let the experts invest your money sensibly over time within a tax-free ISA and a pension pot. Find and combine lost pensions too.
There’s two pots with Beach, and you can use either, or both, depending on your current financial circumstances and savings goals. But the concept is that most people would probably want both pots so they can save and invest in life generally (with an easy access pot), and then save separately for retirement (with a pension pot).
Beach explains this concept quite nicely: 'save for now and your future at the same time.'
The easy access pot is for lifetime savings, so that’s essentially any money you are happy to invest (ideally for several years but you can access the money in around a week).
Essentially this pot is to save for the duration of your life, taking money out as and when you need it, but otherwise it should be growing nicely in the background without you worrying about it.
Within this easy access pot there's actually two separate accounts, an ISA and a standard account, but they are combined to make things a bit simpler, with the idea that Beach handles things for you (which will make sense in just a moment).
With the ISA, all the money you make is tax-free, and you can save up to £20,000 per tax year (April 6th to April 5th the following year).
By tax-free we mean it will grow tax-free, and you can withdraw it tax-free too.
Nuts About Money tip: saving the tax can save you a small fortune when the figures get larger over time. Investing outside of an ISA can mean you pay a fair bit of tax on the money you make over time.
As you can withdraw your money tax-free, these accounts are really great for building up an income for later in life too, alongside a pension.
Note: with Beach, the ISA is ‘flexible’, which means you can withdraw and re-add the same amount of money back into your account without it counting towards your ISA allowance.
If you use an ISA and don't save more than £20,000 (per tax year) you wont need to worry about this account. But with the standard account, the money you make could be eligible for taxes, it depends on the investments and how much you make. But, it allows you to save much more than that £20,000 annual allowance with the ISA if you want to. Remember it’s still tax on the money you make, so you get to keep the rest of it as profit.
With Beach, let’s say you were lucky enough to be able to invest more than £20,000 in a tax year and set up a regular top up of £2,000 per month. When you hit that £20,000 ISA allowance, any further top ups will automatically go into your standard account, so you can keep investing. Meaning you don’t have to worry about any maths or tracking your allowance, it’s all managed for you.
And if you were saving into an ISA elsewhere, you can adjust your ISA allowance within the Beach app and it will add any future money you save into the correct account.
When the new tax year comes around, your contributions will go back into your ISA until it’s full up again. Pretty clever right?
You’ll get a statement at the end of the tax year to help with any taxes you might need to pay. And you won’t necessarily have to pay any taxes, it depends on your personal circumstances and the tax rules and allowances (e.g. £3,000 Capital Gains Tax allowance).
You can get money from your easy access pot back in around a week, so your cash is still accessible when you need it. It takes a while to sell investments, which is why it’s not instant, and this is typical with most investment options wherever you invest.
The pension pot is to save for retirement, and works in a similar way to what you might be used to, such as with a pension from work…
All the money you add into your pension will go in tax-free, and it will grow tax-free too.
You might pay tax when you withdraw it later in life, it depends on your income at the time, but you’ll be able to withdraw 25% tax-free (up to a current limit of £268,275 tax-free). If you do pay tax on the remaining 75% it will be Income Tax, so the same tax you pay on your salary now.
Note: normally your pension provider will handle the tax for you when you retire, so you don’t have to worry too much about that now.
As you add money into a Beach pension from your bank account after you’ve been paid, you’ve already paid tax on it through your income. So to give you the tax back, when you add money to your Beach pension, the government will automatically add 25% directly into your pension pot.
Beach calls this a bonus (as it’s basically free money), and it’s technically called tax relief from the government. The 25% is to refund 20% tax, and if you pay 40% or 45% tax you can claim the extra back directly from the government. Beach can point you in the right direction if you need help.
With Beach you can take control over your retirement savings, and manage your own pension (most people don't know how much is in their pension). It's also a great option to boost your retirement savings alongside your pension from work, or if you’re self-employed, a great option for you to save into a pension yourself (as you won’t have a work one).
Note: you can’t withdraw money from a pension until at least the age of 55 (rising to 57 in 2028).
We’ll all need a huge pension pot by the time we retire these days. We estimate that to achieve a comfortable retirement for someone who is 40 now, they’ll need around £1.6 million in their pension pot by the time they retire (that’s not a joke!). And if you’re 18 now, it's over £2 million.
Nuts About Money tip: estimate the pension pot you’ll need at retirement with our pension calculator.
This shocking news is why Beach has focused on making an easy to use pension so we can all contribute a little more to our retirement savings if and when we can, in an easy to use app.
With Beach, you can combine all your old pensions from old jobs if you want to, so they’re all in one place, making your pension easier to manage. And if you’re not sure where your pensions are, Beach can track them down for you and transfer them over (a free service).
This is a really cool and unique feature, making planning your savings even easier.
Presuming you want to save into both an easy access pot and a pension pot in order to grow your retirement savings and general savings at the same time, with Beach you can split each top up you add from your bank across both pots.
So, for each monthly top up you add you could have 50% go into your easy access pot and 50% go into your pension pot, or 20% and 80%, the choice is yours. You can change it as and when you like, depending on your circumstances at the time, such as a pay rise, new job, getting married, having kids, or even just saving for a newly booked holiday.
For instance, you could have a set amount you save each month, say £200, and then this £200 is split as you like, changing in future, without having to re-do all of your regular top up settings and setting up different bank transfers and all the related hassle. It’s all sorted in a few taps on your phone.
We think it’s pretty great, not only for the ease, but as it keeps you focused on both pots, so you aren’t neglecting your retirement savings (which are often overlooked but often the best way to grow your money over time), and you also aren’t neglecting your general savings either, saving between the two as you like.
With most investment apps there's a range of investments to choose from, the problem is most people aren't sure what to choose. Beach simplifies this, there's only one investment choice per pot (one for the easy access pot and one for the pension pot). And when you add money, it will be invested in that plan. All nice and easy.
The investments are managed by the experts at the largest investment company in the world, BlackRock (measured by how much money they look after, a massive £9 trillion). The experts are constantly reviewing the investments and making changes to ensure the investments have the potential to grow.
The investment plans are designed to grow sensibly continually over time. That’s not to say your money will continually grow every day, there will be ups and downs, but the aim of the investments is to grow substantially over the years.
Even after you retire, the investment plans will still aim to grow your money over time in a sensible way for retirement (more on that just below).
And to top it all off, the investments consider things like reducing carbon emissions (through the companies they invest in), so you can feel good your money is having a positive impact too (compared to alternative investments in things like fossil fuel companies).
This investment plan in the easy access pot is designed to steadily grow over the years in a sensible way, and is often called a ‘balanced’ investment.
The goal is not to make as much money as possible in the shortest amount of time, as that would result in large increases and decreases in value each year, which is not suited to most people.
The goal is to grow sensibly and reliably over time, without too large ups and downs. It is a balance between risk and reward, and typically forms the foundation of lifetime savings, and therefore suited to most people throughout their life.
Getting a bit technical now, the investment plan has around 70% of the investments in stocks and shares, which are investments in large companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft and thousands of others across the UK, US and some across the world.
The remaining 30% is invested in things that generate an income, and typically, that’s loans to governments (such as the UK and US government) in exchange for interest payments, which are called bonds. These are seen as very safe investments and typically very high interest rates.
So, when combined together, they provide an opportunity for the investment to increase in value over time, continually receiving income (from the bonds), and not be too volatile (large increases and decreases in value). It grows in value well during the good years, and protects the overall investment should there be a bad year.
Sounds pretty sensible right? Learn more about the easy access pot on the Beach website¹.
Note: the investment fund launched midway through 2020. And during 2022 there was a global stock market crash following the economic impact of Covid-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war, affecting the return significantly, which affected the majority of investments wherever you might have invested.
With the pension pot, it’s a bit different, the aim is to build up your pension pot in a sensible way to a hopefully nice and large pension pot by the time you retire. And, after that it will continually grow in a sensible way to help provide you with a retirement income too.
Getting technical again, there's actually a range of different investments behind the scenes and the one you get will depend on your age.
The investment plan (pension plan) will aim to grow your pension as much as possible while you’re younger, meaning almost all of the investments will be in stocks and shares (such as large companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft). This will mean more ups and downs in value over the years but has the potential to grow a lot more over time. This is okay as you can't withdraw pension money until later in your life.
And then gradually as you age (close to retirement and close to withdrawing money out of it), the plan will move into more balanced investments, with bonds, that provide an income (like interest). This reduces the ups and downs in value, until retirement age, where it will only provide an income, so there won’t be any ups and downs in retirement when you need the money.
It’s all handled for you by the experts.
Again sounds pretty sensible right? Learn more about the pension pot on the Beach website¹.
With a personal pension, which is a pension you set up yourself (like with Beach), you can save into it tax-free, but as you’ve already paid tax on your income (or will do in future), when you add money to your pension, the government will give you the tax you’ve paid back as a bonus.
For 20% tax you've paid on your salary, you’ll get a 25% bonus on all the money you add to your pension from your bank (it sounds odd but the maths works out). And it’s all handled for you by Beach, the money will simply turn up in your pension pot after a month or two.
If you pay 40% or 45% tax, you can claim the extra back directly from the government (such as on a Self Assessment tax return).
The phone app is available on both Apple and Android and really easy to use.
When signing up, it’s pretty straightforward and will guide you through either opening an easy access pot or a pension pot, or both. There’s easy to understand explanations to help if there’s a few things you don’t quite understand (finance stuff can get complicated).
Once set up, the app brings your pension pot and general savings together into one, showing you a total balance (but it’s not a problem if you’re just saving in a single pot, it will just show that).
It’s got pretty much everything you’d expect, and you can see things like how much you’ve added, how much in bonuses you’ve received from the government on your pension savings, and the ability to change your account settings and financial circumstances.
It’s easy to do things such as make a withdrawal from your easy access pot, or add money, and transfer pensions and/or ISAs in just a few simple steps too.
Overall, it’s not complicated or overwhelming, it’s quite refreshing and modern, showing you exactly what you want to know, your balance!
If you are self-employed, a personal pension is pretty much your main option for saving for retirement. This is a pension you set up yourself, rather than an employer like with a pension from work.
Pensions can be super complicated, and we can see why not many self-employed people have them, but they are super important. If you’re self-employed and not saving into a pension, start today! Even saving a small bit each month will really improve your living standards in retirement.
Beach is a great option for those self-employed as it’s easy to set up and easy to add money. And there’s only one pension plan, based on your age, so you won't be worrying if you've used the right or wrong one plan for your retirement savings.
You can add money monthly, or when you like as a one-off top ups.
Did you know that we now have an average of 12 jobs in our lifetime? (According to government research). That’s led to billions of pounds being lost in pension pots over the years, with millions of people forgetting about them or losing them.
Well, Beach can help you find your old pensions! Even if you don’t have any paperwork at all. And even if you don’t know the pension provider.
All you’ll need is the name of your employer and a rough estimate of when you worked there. Beach will then head off and find the pension provider and your pension pot, and transfer it over to Beach for you.
As simple as that. Pretty great right? It’s a free service too. However, as your pension will be with Beach, you’ll pay fees on your pension pot, just like with every other pension provider (more on fees just below).
Learn more about this on the Beach website¹.
Bringing all your old pensions together can be a great idea, so you can manage all your retirement savings in one place. And not forget about them later in life!
With Beach, you can do that easily. All you need to do is add a few details about your pension in the app, and Beach will reach out to your existing pension providers and transfer them over to your Beach pension. If you’re not sure where your pension is, Beach can find them for you too.
It’s all handled via the app, and only takes a few minutes to get started. With some providers the process can be quick, and Beach’s record is currently 24 hours! Although, expect it to take around 6 weeks.
It’s an easy to use app, and the fees are easy to understand too.
There’s one simple fee to Beach, which is 0.50% of your savings per year. With a minimum of £3.99 per month.
This is reasonable, and inline with most other investment options. All the extra services such as finding lost pensions are completely free.
If you compare that with a financial advisor, on average you’d pay 2.14% per year (according to the Financial Conduct Authority). That includes financial advice, so it's not a direct comparison.
You would then also pay a fee within each investment plan (e.g. the investment within the easy access pot and the pension pot). These are fees the investment manager charges themselves, and not a fee to Beach.
For the easy access pot, the fee is 0.17% per year, and for the pension pot, it’s 0.23% per year. These fees are low, and one of the reasons why they were selected by Beach, to ensure you are getting great value.
Some investments elsewhere have fees that can be well over 1%, and the average is around 0.60% (according to BlackRock). It all depends on the investment itself and how it’s managed.
The customer support options are excellent. There’s WhatsApp and email and you can send a message within the app too. And the team is based in the UK.
They’re friendly and can help with any account queries and questions. However, they are not financial advisors and so can’t help with any financial decisions.
The support runs from 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday.
Yep. Beach is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), who are the people responsible for making sure you and your money are looked after.
You are also covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), which can provide up to £85,000 in compensation if a financial company holding your money were to go out of business.
With Beach, your investments are held in your name, and can only be returned to you. If anything were to happen to Beach (such as going out of business), your money and investments would still exist, and be returned to you.
Also, Beach doesn’t actually hold any of your cash directly, they arrange the investments on your behalf. As your money is invested, it’s held within the investments managed by BlackRock, the largest investment company in the world. It’s not impossible, but highly unlikely that BlackRock were to go out of business anytime soon, and even then, your investments would still exist and be returned to you as they are held separately to BlackRock’s own money.
Here’s a quick recap and the pros and cons of Beach:
We think Beach is a great option to save and invest for your future, especially if you’re not confident investing or have much investing knowledge (which is totally fine!).
Even if you do know what you are doing, it’s a great option for hands-off investing, with the investments managed by experts.
Beach provides all the right accounts to be set up for success, with an easy access pot for general savings, which includes an ISA (tax-free saving) and an standard account (to save more than the ISA allowance of £20,000 per year), and a pension pot for retirement savings (which has great tax-efficient advantages too).
On top of that, the investments are suited to long term investing, with the easy access pot containing a balanced investment suitable for the majority of people. It’s designed to gradually grow over the years sensibly (although there’s no guarantees of course).
The pension pot has investments suited towards your age group, so you don’t have to worry about that side of things either. And the investments will continually adjust to keep you on the right track for retirement.
Alongside that, you can combine old pensions into one pot. A great option to manage your retirement savings in one place, and if you’ve lost any old pensions over the years, Beach can find these for you too (and this service is free, so even better).
The customer service is excellent with in-app, email and WhatsApp in the UK. They just don’t provide financial advice, but can help with other issues (such as with your account).
The app itself is easy to use, and easy to navigate around, with a total balance to show you your total savings amount.
Overall, it’s great, and a big 5 stars. Head over to the Beach website¹ to learn more and get started.
As we’ve written a review, we wanted to let you know some important information before you sign up.
When investing, your capital is at risk. The value of your investments can go down as well as up, so you may get back less than you put in. Tax treatment depends on your individual circumstances, and could change in the future. You should seek financial advice if you are unsure about investing.
This communication is intended for information and educational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or an investment recommendation. Past performance is not an indication of future results.
Beach is in partnership with Nuts About Money, and both businesses could benefit from you signing up.
Let the experts invest your money sensibly over time within a tax-free ISA and a pension pot. Find and combine lost pensions too.
Let the experts invest your money sensibly over time within a tax-free ISA and a pension pot. Find and combine lost pensions too.
Let the experts invest your money sensibly over time within a tax-free ISA and a pension pot. Find and combine lost pensions too.
We’d love to hear from you, and it will help others too.
Christopher Dowling combines a communications degree with over 10 years experience in the financial services industry in London – with focus on educating people on a wide range of money topics in an easy to understand way. He writes about savings, investing, pensions, mortgages, insurance, banking, loans, business finance and other money topics.
This article was written, reviewed and fact checked by the expert team at Nuts About Money. You’re in safe hands. Learn more.
We're experts in all things money, with years of combined experience working in the finance industry and writing about money. We understand the ins and outs, how to get the best deals, save money, and how to communicate money in an easy to understand way (we hope you agree).
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Let the experts invest your money sensibly over time within a tax-free ISA and a pension pot. Find and combine lost pensions too.
