Yahoo Finance My first boss: Romi Savova, PensionBee founder and CEO
The people who helped shape business leaders
Romi Savova left her job in investment banking in 2014 with the aim of simplifying pension savings in the UK.
PensionBee (PBEE.L) now has 200 staff based across the UK, while the online provider and app now has 200,000 invested customers. In April, it reported that assets under administration had increased to £3.38 billion.
I had never intended to work in finance, I always thought I would be a lawyer. But I saw an internship at Goldman Sachs (GS) as a stepping stone. I joined the country risk team in 2007, fortuitously before the financial crisis, where I learned how much business we should do with Argentina or China, and an understanding of all the political and economic systems.
My first boss there was Katie Falconi, now enterprise risk management lead at Stripe. At the time, it was rare to have a female boss in financial services. That was important as you usually look at your first boss and assess self-consciously what it takes to become senior. A strong female figure was pretty formative.
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As a VP in credit risk, Katie was always busy and was in the office early, because she had to leave to pick up her kids. That was exceptionally rare and, until you have children, you don’t realise the responsibility you have until you become a parent.
It was only a summer internship and we had to do a lot of country assessment, working out the economic opportunity in one page. I learned to get to the point quickly; time was short for anyone at the company reading those recommendations. From Katie, I learned how to be direct, precise, say what you think and don’t assume that everyone has all the time in the world to listen to you. It all left a mark.
With your first boss you often don’t realise what you have learned and the effect they have had until much later. When you’re in your job you are going about your daily life, trying to make sense of your work — especially coming in from university — and so you absorb a lot from what you learn as the truth.
Katie was positive, even when addressing serious matters. There was a house lesson that some countries default every 10 years. Even if an employee was spending 14 hours a day working on a particular matter, it was important to approach it with a positive attitude towards solving problems.
There was another female VP in the department I worked at, who later went onto the management committee at Goldman, where I had to do a piece of analysis. As a first job, you are very much still learning and silly mistakes can be made. I did the cardinal sin in finance of copy and pasting the wrong row into the spreadsheet and the output made no sense.
I walked into her office and another senior VP would have ripped my head off. However, she looked at me in surprise and said calmly, ‘Go back and come back when it’s correct’. I was expecting the worst and it was a powerful teaching moment in how to respond to mistakes.
I ended up loving the job and joined Goldman’s London team. I broadened my scope into financial institutions, saw how services can make lives better and how a lot of it wasn’t always working for normal people.
I left my job at Goldman, did an MBA at Harvard Business School, worked at Morgan Stanley and went on to a fintech company called Credit Benchmark. As a professional, I found it hard to put all my pension pots in one place that I could see myself, understand the fees and performance of the plan. The motivation to make finance better was the backbone of how PensionBee started.
We designed the auto-enrollment system in 2012 which works for most people but not for everyone, such as the self-employed or women who work part-time.
What would be great is if we found a way to expand the scope of retirement provision to make savings easier for parts of the population that have a system that isn't set up for them. We have to make it easy for people to come into the savings system, and for it to be almost automatic.
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The mental barrier around pension management is that the information is on a piece of paper in a draw you hope not to open. Our data shows that the more visibility you have, the more you engage, take notice and pay in. The earlier you start the better: the impact of compound returns in financial markets is what enables people to retire.
As a business founder In the early days you are responsible for everything from fixing the printer, to hiring and speaking to investors.
But within pensions, one of the things we are fortunate about is that it’s not seen as a sexy area. A lot of entrepreneurs and businesses think it’s too hard and that perceived complexity keeps people away.
However, given how finance can change lives, it is incredibly rewarding and if you can afford to take a very long-term view, which you have to in pensions, then it’s absolutely the right business.
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