Investment terms and conditions for Monzo Pension

These terms and conditions are between you and Monzo Bank Limited (Monzo/us/we) for the services we give you for your Monzo Pension. You agree to them by asking us to open a Monzo Pension (“Pension Account”) and using our services in connection with that account. A copy of this agreement will always be available in the Monzo app.

You should read this along with our Data Privacy Notice, which explains how we use your data.

When you open your pension through the Monzo app, you’re opening a self-invested personal pension. We work closely with FNZ Securities Limited (“FNZ Securities”) to provide services to you for your Pension Account. They perform very important roles for your pension - they’re both the operator and administrator of the pension scheme (“Scheme”) you’ll become a member of when you open a Pension Account.

As operator of the pension scheme, FNZ Securities needs to comply with all applicable laws and FCA rules for operators of personal pension schemes, and runs the scheme in line with the Trust Deed and Scheme rules. As administrator of the pension scheme, it runs the scheme in line with the tax requirements which apply to pension schemes . Your Pension Account is subject to the Trust Deed and Scheme Rules. These don’t form part of your agreement with us or with FNZ Securities but by opening a Pension Account, you agree to be bound by them. You can get a copy of them if you ask us. If anything in these terms is inconsistent with the Trust Deed and Scheme Rules, then the terms of that document (and not these terms) will apply for the parts where there’s inconsistency.

You need to enter a separate agreement with FNZ Securities so they can give you services as the operator and administrator of the pension scheme (“FNZ Securities Pension Terms”). You should read them carefully, as they set out how FNZ Securities will give you important services for your pension.

We give some investment services for your pension to you directly (the “Investment Services”). Those Investment Services are covered by the agreement between you and Monzo which is made up of these terms and conditions and:

The investments and cash held in your pension will be registered in the name of the pension scheme trustee FNZ Securities Pension Scheme Trustee Limited (“Trustee”), or by FNZ Securities or its nominee as custodian for the Trustee. You’ll be entitled to the benefits from those investments. Your investments and cash will be ring-fenced and held separately from any of FNZ Securities’ assets, and Monzo’s assets. The Trustee owns the investments and cash but they’ve agreed you may, through us, give FNZ Securities instructions in relation to your investments and cash.

In entering these terms with us, you give Monzo authority to enter the FNZ Securities Pension Terms and act on your behalf as your agent in dealing with FNZ Securities (“Pension Services Partner”). As your agent we’ll have your authority to:

The Pension Services Partner will accept instructions and information from us as if given by you directly. When the Pension Services Partner sends us information about your Pension Account, we’re responsible for giving that information to you. The FNZ Securities Pension Terms will apply as well as these terms, unless they contradict one another. If that happens, then for the parts where there’s a conflict, only the FNZ Securities Pension Terms will apply.

To open and maintain a Monzo Pension you must:

You must complete any application form or transfer form, and give us any information we reasonably ask for to open a Monzo Pension. You can only use your Monzo Pension and our Investment Services for personal use.

The Trustee, as owner of the investments and cash held in your pension, has agreed Monzo will provide a dealing service that lets you buy and sell certain investments in your Pension Account.

We do this by arranging for the Pension Services Partner to buy and sell investments according to your instructions, as long as the investment is one that can be held in your pension (a permitted investment) and your instruction is in line with these terms and conditions.

We won’t give you any legal or tax advice to do with your Pension Account, or the investments in it.

We’ll provide dealing services in line with:

In entering this agreement, you appoint us as your agent to deal with the Pension Services Partner on your behalf in relation to your orders to deal in investments. This means we can take actions on your behalf that may be necessary to give effect to your orders.

Where investments you instruct us to buy, sell or hold are traded on a market or exchange, you authorise us to do whatever we need to so that we follow the rules of those markets or exchanges, and good market practice.

If you have orders for investments that may be executed outside a trading venue, we’ll tell you (including in these terms). In entering this agreement, you consent to us and/or the Pension Services Partner and its delegates executing these orders.

You confirm that you understand and agree that:

Aggregation is where your order to buy or sell an investment is added together with equivalent orders from other customers, and they’re all submitted as one large order. Whilst all parties will act fairly when aggregating orders, doing so can sometimes work to your disadvantage.

We’ll process your orders for these kinds of investment as soon as we can.

Each fund we offer has a particular cut-off time for accepting orders. If your order reaches the fund before the cut-off time on a day the fund accepts orders, then your order will be processed the same day. But if your order reaches the fund after that cut-off time, it’ll be processed the next day on which the fund accepts orders (usually, this is business days).

It’ll usually take at least four business days for your order to buy or sell interests in a fund to be finished. It could take longer if the fund doesn’t accept orders on all business days in the UK.

You agree we might complete your orders in two or more parts if we need to, to make sure the full value of your original order is invested in line with your instructions.

We’ll do this where we can’t invest the full cash amount of your order straight away. This could happen if the value of your order (plus any orders aggregated with yours) doesn’t equal the value of a whole number of shares, for example. If there are fractions of a given investment which aren’t allocated to any Monzo customer once all orders have been aggregated, the Pension Services Partner will hold those fractions.

We may give you the option to ‘round-up’ spare change from transactions in your current account, and use that spare change to place orders to buy investments within your Pension Account. You can tell us to do that for you in the app. When you turn on the round-ups feature for Pension Accounts, you’re authorising us to automatically use that money to create a recurring order to buy investments on your behalf under these terms.

We’ll try to place recurring buy orders once each week, but there may be times where we can’t do so, for example if the value of the round-ups for that week isn’t large enough to allow us to execute orders efficiently. If that happens, we’ll use the spare change rounded up to place a recurring buy order at the next available opportunity.

The FCA rules which require firms to make sure investments are appropriate for customers don’t apply to the types of investment which we offer, or to self-invested personal pensions.

This means that we don’t assess the appropriateness of the Pension Account or the investments you can access in it, so you don’t get the benefit of the FCA rules on appropriateness.

We also don’t offer personalised advice on your Pension Account, or the investments available within it. This means we’ve not considered whether the Monzo Pension or the investments are right for your personal circumstances.

You’re always responsible for choosing the investments you hold in your pension from the options we have available. We’ll show you a default option in the app which is linked to the retirement age you choose, to try and simplify the choice of how to invest within your pension in line with FCA rules. But the final choice of what you invest in is still up to you, and you can always choose an alternative to the default option we show if you want to. If you’re investing in a target date retirement fund, you may need to update your target retirement age in the app to do so.

The Trustee of the Pension Scheme also has the right to restrict the kind of investments which can be held within the pension scheme - you can see more in the FNZ Securities Pension Terms.

We might expand our offering to include other investments in future, and you’ll see them in the app if we do so. We can also stop offering a given investment either temporarily or permanently and, wherever possible, we’ll tell you before that happens.

We’ve set out the details of our fees and charges and the charges for the investments we offer in the pension fee information document. You can access this in the app before you open a Pension Account, and it’ll be available in the app after you’ve opened your pension too. We’ll round the fees due down to the nearest £0.01.

Throughout each month, we calculate the fees due for each day. At the end of the month, we then add together the fees for each day to work out how much you owe for that month, and then charge that amount to your Pension Account. The Pension Services Partner will collect our fees from your Pension Account on our behalf. You authorise us as your agent to instruct the Pension Services Partner to take the fees from your Pension Account and pay them to us or any relevant third party. See the FNZ Securities Pension Terms for more details on how the Pension Services Partner collects fees.

As well as Monzo’s fees, the providers of the investments in your Pension Account may also charge fees. For example, fund managers charge a fee for managing the funds you invest in. As explained in the fee information document and fund documents, the fund managers’ fees are taken from the fund – they’re reflected in the value of the investments in your account. Our fee information document explains when other fees may be charged. Wherever possible, we’ll give you as much notice as we reasonably can if the fees you need to pay for the investments in your Pension Account change.

There may be a delay in completing orders you submit if you owe us amounts under this or any other agreement, and we’re in the process of selling investments in order to collect fees you owe us.

Because the money in your Pension Account will be invested, it’s unlikely there’ll be a significant cash balance in it at any time. Interest isn’t paid to you on cash balances within Pension Accounts.

We may accept fees, commissions and minor non-monetary benefits from third parties (“Benefits”) related to Investment Services.

We won’t accept any Benefits which benefit us, our shareholders, or our employees unless there’s also a tangible benefit to our customers. We’ll only accept Benefits if we consider that:

We’ll treat you and the Trustee as a retail client. This means you’ll get the highest level of protection available under FCA Rules.

Using the Monzo app, email, phone or mail to your home address, we’ll:

We may also send you notifications about your Pension Account through the Monzo app.

If any of your contact details change, including moving abroad, let us know as soon as possible.

Under FCA rules, we need to record communications between you and Monzo which lead to a transaction in an investment. This includes where you contact us over the phone. You have the right to ask for a copy of the records of those communications, including recordings of phone calls, at any time in the five-year period – starting on the date the relevant communication was recorded.

You can give us instructions in relation to your Pension Account using the Monzo app. We can (but don’t have to) agree to take your instructions in other ways as well.

You're responsible for making sure your device can run the Monzo app (which we'll update from time to time). Sometimes important information won’t show correctly on older operating systems. We also can't guarantee all features in your Monzo app will work as expected on older operating systems.

Keep your phone, PIN and security details safe at all times. If we find any security issues affecting your Pension Account, we’ll contact you as soon as possible in the most secure way, using one of our usual channels.

We may act on any instruction we reasonably believe is from you, without doing any more checks or investigations. We won’t be liable for not following an instruction we don’t believe is genuine, a delay in carrying out such an instruction, or for following an instruction which isn’t genuine, if we’ve acted reasonably and in good faith.

We may delay or not carry out an instruction:

We may refuse to follow an instruction if:

If we refuse to follow an instruction, we’ll let you know as soon as possible unless there’s a legal or regulatory reason not to, using one of our usual channels.

Neither we nor our Pension Services Partner will lend your investments to anyone else or use them to raise finance.

You agree our Pension Services Partner can use any cash you have in your Pension Account, or sell any investments in your Pension Account and transfer the proceeds to us, if you owe money to Monzo.

You must make payments into your Pension Account from your Monzo current account, and in pounds sterling. Payments must be at least £1 in value.

When you give us instructions to buy investments, we’ll transfer the money needed from your Monzo current account to the Trustee of the Scheme, where it’ll be held in accordance with the FNZ Securities Pension Terms.

Payments you make into your Pension Account will be in line with the terms of your current account. You can set up regular payments into your Pension Account, and you can change the amount and date of those payments, or cancel them altogether, at any time. See the time limits for changes to regular payments in the Terms and Conditions for your current account under the ‘Standing Orders’ section.

We may reject any payments into your Pension Account where we suspect that you’re not the beneficial owner of the amount paid, in accordance with financial crime laws and regulations.

The Pension Services Partner will arrange for basic rate tax relief from HMRC to be applied on the amount you pay into your Pension Account – see the FNZ Securities Pension Terms for more details. If you pay income tax at higher or additional rates of tax, then you’ll need to claim the further tax relief due on your self assessment tax return. If you live in Scotland or Wales, different tax rates and different rates of tax relief may apply.

The Pension Services Partner will add the tax relief to your Pension Account once they receive it from HMRC. It’ll be invested in line with your existing instructions.

When you agree to the application to open a Monzo Pension, you’re agreeing you’ll only make contributions which are eligible for tax relief in the UK, and you won’t contribute more than the limit on tax-free contributions set in legislation. It’s your responsibility to make sure you don’t contribute more than this amount each year across all of your pensions. If you do, you’ll be responsible for paying any tax charges which are due.

If you ask us to find your old pensions in the app, we work with a third party, Raindrop Technologies Holdings (Raindrop), to do so. In entering these terms, you’re agreeing we can (working with the Pension Services Partner) arrange for the transfer of pensions that you ask us to find for you into your Pension Account.

Raindrop helps us find your old pensions, but aren’t involved in transferring them - they’ll use information you submit about your old pensions and your former employers, and the signature you provide in the app, to contact providers of your old pensions (and, where relevant, your former employers). Raindrop will use this information to send providers of your old pensions ‘letters of authority’, which are documents that confirm we’ve got your permission to trace your pensions for you.

We don't guarantee we’ll be able to find your pensions. Just because we don’t find a pension, that isn’t to say it doesn’t exist. If we have reasonable grounds to believe you have tried to trace all of your past pensions through the Monzo app before, we may limit your ability to use the tracing services.

We cannot trace certain types of pension, including:

As long as the pensions you want to transfer are ones which we and our Pensions Services Partner can accept, you can ask us to arrange the transfer of your pension from another provider into your Monzo Pension in the app. We can only accept transfers of the entire value of pensions held with other providers - this means we don’t support partial transfers. If you transfer more than one pension to us, we’ll place all pensions in one Pension Account. Your previous provider will need to sell your investments before making the transfer, so they can transfer the sale proceeds to us as cash.

We won’t accept transfers-in from pensions which we know:

There may be other examples in addition to the above where we can accept transfers, but you’ll lose particular benefits if you transfer (like protected retirement age). It’s your responsibility to check whether the pensions you’re asking us to find and transfer have these features. We won’t be liable if you instruct us to transfer pensions which have features like these, and you lose them if you transfer.

We also reserve the right not to accept transfers below a certain value, or if we have reasonable grounds to believe the transfer request isn’t genuine - this is so we can make sure we’re able to offer transfer-in services in a cost-effective way for all customers. We’ll tell you in the app if we can’t accept a transfer of a particular pension.

You can ask us to transfer your Monzo Pension out to a registered pension scheme at any time. If we can’t directly transfer the investments held in your Pension Account to your new pension scheme, then we’ll sell the investments and transfer the cash proceeds, as long as your new scheme accepts the transfer request. We’ll collect any fees or charges you need to pay before the transfer is completed.

If you want to start taking benefits from your Pension Account flexibly (meaning you want to use your pension to start taking income, for example by selling-down investments in your Pension Account), then you’ll need to transfer your Pension Account to another registered pension scheme. You should start the process to transfer your pension with the new provider.

It’ll be possible to take money out of your Pension Account with us in certain circumstances, as long as it’s allowed under applicable legislation, and the Trust Deed and Scheme Rules. This includes:

If you think you’re entitled to take money out of your pension, get in touch through the app. You’ll need to give us information about your situation, and the reason for taking money out of your pension. This is so the Pension Services Partner can be sure the payments you want us to facilitate are completed in line with the relevant legislation, and the Trust Deed and the Scheme Rules.

We won’t arrange for the Pension Services Partner to pay any benefits unless all of the following are true:

We’ll always try to act in your best interests. In some situations, there’s a chance our interests and your interests, or your interests and those of another customer, will conflict with one another. We have a conflicts of interest policy to deal with these scenarios, in accordance with FCA rules, which is overseen by our Compliance department. A summary of this policy is available on our website.

We may change the identity of the Pension Services Partner. If we do, we’ll always try to give you enough notice of the change for you to consider it properly, and take any actions you might need or want to take (like moving your pension to another provider).

If we change the identity of the Pension Services Partner, we’ll need to instruct the outgoing Pension Services Partner to transfer all our customers' agreements, and all of our customers’ investments and money, to the new pension services partner. In entering this agreement with us, you agree we can give these instructions, and any others which might be necessary, to complete the transfer.

You should contact us if you have any questions about these terms and conditions or the FNZ Securities Pension Terms.

We’ll give you reports and statements for your Pension Account in line with FCA rules. You can find those statements and reports in the Monzo app.

Since you’re only allowed to use your Pension Account for personal use, we’re not responsible to you for any loss of profit, loss of business, business interruption, or loss of business opportunity. This applies to you using your Pension Account for personal use, as well as if you wrongly use it for commercial or business purposes.

None of these terms affect your legal rights as a consumer. You can find more information on the Competition and Markets Authority website’ or the Financial Ombudsman Service website. These terms don’t exclude or limit our liability to you where it’s against the law for us to do so.

We’re responsible to you for any foreseeable loss and damage which we cause to you by breaching the terms of this contract or failing to use reasonable care or skill providing services to you. When we say ‘foreseeable’, this means we could or should have expected those losses or that damage.

We’re not responsible for any loss or damage (direct or indirect) caused by something beyond our reasonable control. We’re also not responsible for any loss or damage (direct and indirect) if something was unavoidable despite us using reasonable care and skill to avoid it. This may include:

We can make changes to our fees and charges, the terms of this agreement or the terms of any other agreement which these terms apply to. This includes introducing new charges, changing the level of fees and charges, and charging in a different way.

We may make these changes, including fees we charge, because of changes to:

We can make changes to these terms and charges that work in your favour for any reason. We can also make proportionate changes for any other balanced and valid reason that impacts us or your Pension Account.

If we make changes that are clearly in your favour, we’ll tell you once we’ve made them. Otherwise we’ll give you at least 30 days’ notice and tell you our reasons in the most secure way, using one of our usual channels.

If you don’t agree to changes we make, you can let us know and we’ll help you transfer your Pension Account to another provider fee-free in line with the ‘Closing your account’ section. To do that, you’ll need to tell us the provider you want to transfer to. If we don’t hear from you before the changes come into effect, we’ll assume you’re happy and accept the changes we’ve made.

We also have the right to transfer any of our rights or obligations under these terms and conditions to another company in our group. This means any parent, subsidiary or associated company of Monzo Bank Limited.

You can let us know that you’d like to cancel your Pension Account within the timelines below. Cancelling is different from closing your account, and it has different consequences. See more details below on closing your account.

You can cancel your Pension Account within 30 days of opening it, or cancel a transfer from another pension scheme within 30 days of the transfer completing. Your Pension Account is opened when you accept these terms and conditions in the Monzo app. You can give notice to cancel using the Monzo app, and we’ll pass this on to the Pension Services Partner and the Trustee where we need to - cancelling this agreement will mean your agreement with the Pension Services Partner will also be cancelled.

If you cancel:

If you cancel and your initial payment has already been invested, we’ll sell your investments and pay you the sale process along with any cash in your Pension Account. The sale proceeds may be more or less than you put in.

If you cancel a transfer-in, then you’ll need to choose an alternative provider to transfer your pension to (including any contributions you’ve made to your Pension Account since opening it). Bear in mind your previous provider may not accept a transfer-back and you may need to find a new provider.

You can also cancel a request to trace old pensions. Cancelling a transfer-in will also cancel your request to trace any pensions you’ve asked us to find (to the extent the tracing hasn’t been completed yet).

If you don’t cancel your Pension Account within the timeframes set out above, you can still close your account at any time - see more below.

Once this agreement has started it won’t end until you or we end it or, if earlier, you stop being a member of the Scheme.

You can end this agreement and close your Pension Account at any other time by giving us notice through the app. We’ll close your account as soon as we reasonably can, but we’ll need to arrange a transfer to an alternative provider before we can do so. You’ll need to start the transfer process with the new provider. The Pension Services Partner can only close your Pension Account once all of the investments and money have been transferred to a new provider.

Your agreements with us and the Pension Services Partner won’t end until we’ve completed your instructions, and there are no investments or cash left in your account.

We can restrict your Pension Account and stop providing Investment Services to you by giving you at least two months’ notice. We may restrict your Pension Account immediately, including restricting contributions, if we reasonably believe we need to do so in order to meet our legal or regulatory obligations, or equivalent obligations which apply to the Pension Services Partner.

We may also restrict your Pension Account or stop you using the Monzo app immediately if you no longer have a Monzo current account or we believe you’ve done any of the things which mean we can close your current account (which you’ll find listed in your Current Account Terms and Conditions).

We can also close your Pension Account if it becomes impracticable for Monzo to provide services to you in accordance with applicable law. In these circumstances we will also need to end your agreement with the Pensions Services Provider. If that happens, we’ll give you at least 90 days’ notice and help you transfer your Pension Account to another provider.

If we’re told you’ve died, we’ll stop processing payments into your Pension Account. We’ll hold the investments in your Pension Account until we’ve received relevant documents and evidence from your representatives, and their instructions on your Pension Account and the investments in them. The payments the Pension Services Partner may make and how they’re treated (including for tax purposes) may be affected by:

When you die the Trustees will take any expression of wish you give about how your pension should be used into account when deciding what to do. See the FNZ Securities Pension terms for more details.

If we stop you using the app this agreement will remain in place until all cash and investments due to you are transferred to you, or to a third party.

If you have a complaint, contact us and we’ll do our best to fix the problem. If you’re still not happy, you may be able to refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service and/or the Financial Conduct Authority, or in some cases the Pensions Ombudsman too.

We and the Pension Services Partner are each covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (“FSCS”). This means you may be entitled to compensation from the scheme if either of us can’t meet our obligations. The level of compensation depends on the type of business and the circumstances of your claim, and you’re covered up to a maximum of £85,000 per person.

English law applies to this agreement and disputes will be settled by the courts in the place where you live.

Monzo Bank Limited, authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority (Financial Services Register No. 730427). Registered in England. Registered No. 9446231. Registered Office: Broadwalk House, 5 Appold St, London, EC2A 2AG.