Why I'm Building the UK's First B Corp Pension Platform: My Green Pension

Claire Bishop, Founder of My Green Pension

I never planned on building a pension company.

I'm not from finance. I don't have a background in fund management or regulatory compliance. I'm a photographer, a mum of four boys, and a B Corp entrepreneur who kept hearing the same question and never getting a good answer.

That question changed everything.

Why there's no good answer to 'What's the best ethical pension?'

About seven or eight years ago, I was working as an international account manager for a promotional merchandise company, handling a B Corp brand called Memobottle. It was a great product, but I had a real problem with the industry itself. The waste. The mass production. It didn't sit right with me.

So I made a change. I'd always loved photography, having studied it at school, and I started thinking about how I could turn that passion into a business that actually reflected my values. That's how my photography business was born, and it became the UK's first B Corp-certified photography business.

Through that work, I found myself in an incredible community. I was photographing circular fashion brands, sustainability consultancies, finance companies: all these purpose-driven businesses doing brilliant things. I was learning constantly, and I loved it.

It was at one of these events that I met an ethical financial adviser. We got talking and, somewhere in the conversation, the topic of pensions came up. People in the audience were asking: where can I put my pension so it's not funding the industries I'm fighting against?

And nobody had an answer. At least not a good one.

It wasn't just that one event. I started hearing it everywhere. At B Corp gatherings, at Better Business Network events, on panels. The same question from the audience, every time. What's the best ethical option for a pension? And every time, the panellists would look at each other waiting for someone else to answer. Someone would mention Aviva. Someone else would say Royal London. I even remember B Lab UK promoting Nest at one event. But nobody had a real, satisfying answer.

If you wanted an ethical bank account, there were options. If you wanted ethical investments, there were options. But for pensions, the single biggest financial asset most people will ever have, there was nothing built from the ground up with sustainability at its core.

I remember thinking: if there's no answer, someone needs to create one.

Why I almost didn’t start building My Green Pension

I wish I could say I went straight from that realisation to building My Green Pension. But life doesn't work like that especially when there’s family involved.

I went through a divorce and I had to put my children first. My former business partner was dealing with her own family challenges. Everything we'd been exploring together just fizzled out. We were both overwhelmed, and the idea went quiet.

Then one morning I got a phone call from a friend. We were supposed to be meeting for a catch-up, and he asked me what was happening with My Green Pension. I told him: nothing. And he said I should talk to someone he'd met who could help.

I was sitting up in bed when I took that call. And at that moment, everything in my professional life felt a bit stuck. Nothing was really happening. But something about that conversation reminded me that this idea was too important to let go.

So I made a decision. I'd been accepted onto a PGCE course; teaching felt like the safe, sensible option. I tried it for about a month, juggling the course with looking after my boys as a single mum, and it became clear very quickly that it wasn't going to work. My third son was having difficulties at school because of his additional needs, and I was being pulled in too many directions.

I phoned my contact and said: I want in. Let's go. We're doing this.

That was the moment I went all in on My Green Pension. And I haven't looked back.

Why 96% of employees never choose their pension

One of the statistics that completely changed how I think about this problem is this: 96% of employees stay in whatever default pension fund their employer chooses for them. (Applying Behaviour Insights to Green Pensions)

Let that land for a second.

It means that for the vast majority of people, the pension they end up with isn't something they actively chose. It's something that was chosen for them. Usually by their employer, usually without much thought, and almost always without any consideration for where that money actually gets invested.

The system is designed for inertia. And I don't think that's an accident.

I studied psychology, and when I look at how pensions work, I see behavioural design everywhere, but not the kind that helps people. The complexity, the jargon, the forms, the waiting times, the lack of transparency. It all adds up to one outcome: people don't engage, don't switch, and don't ask questions.

I know this from personal experience. I recently tried to consolidate my own pensions, moving them from default funds where I'd never made an active choice. It took over a year. Letters back and forth. Missing documents. Hoops and forms and delays. If I hadn't been building a pension company at the time, I probably would have given up.

And that's exactly what the system relies on. People giving up.

When I discovered that 96% statistic, it reframed everything for me. If almost everyone stays in the default, then the default is the thing that matters most. And right now, across the UK pension industry, the default is almost never designed with sustainability at its heart.

That's what My Green Pension is setting out to change.

Why the B Corp community is pivotal to My Green Pension

From the very beginning, the B Corp community has been at the centre of everything we're doing. Not because it's a convenient market segment, but because it's genuinely where the need is loudest and the trust runs deepest.

Every major relationship that's shaped My Green Pension has come through the B Corp network. Our technology partner, Rocketmakers, is a great example. I was introduced to them through a former B Corp client. They're a certified B Corp themselves.

It wasn't strategic in the way a business school case study would describe it. It was organic. One conversation leading to another, one introduction opening the next door. Every time, the connection came through shared values and mutual trust.

That's how I found Russ Avery, our Fractional CMO, too. He was already in my B Corp network. I saw he'd gone independent, reached out, and it just made sense. That's how I like to do business: through collaboration, trust, and working with people who believe in what you're trying to achieve.

And when I talk to employers about My Green Pension, the same pattern holds. The businesses that get it immediately, that lean forward and say “Yes, this is what we've been looking for”, are purpose-driven businesses. They're B Corps, ethical SMEs, companies that already care about where their money goes. They just haven't had a pension option that matches their values until now.

Why the UK pension industry won’t change itself

People sometimes ask me: why hasn't anyone done this already?

I think the honest answer is that the big pension providers don't need to. They're already making money. The system already works for them. When your business model depends on inertia, you have no incentive to make things more transparent, more accessible, or more sustainable.

If you're Aviva or Royal London, switching your default fund to something climate-aligned means admitting the old default was a problem. That's a conversation no incumbent wants to have with millions of existing customers.

And then there's the advice gap. Independent financial advisers traditionally work with people who already have significant wealth. If you've got a small pension pot, which most people do, you're unlikely to get personalised advice about where to invest it. So you stay in the default. The cycle continues.

I've seen this play out in my own life. When I was going through my divorce, I was advised not to even worry about pensions in the financial settlement. My pension pot was tiny compared to my ex-husband's, probably four or five times smaller, because I'd been a stay-at-home mum for much of that time. The system didn't flag that as a problem. Nobody suggested I should fight for a fairer split. And the result is a gender pension gap that is as high as 57% in parts of the UK.

That experience planted another seed. My Green Pension is primarily about climate impact, but I carry that awareness of pension inequality with me. It informs how I think about accessibility, transparency, and who the system is really built to serve.

What makes My Green Pension different from other workplace pensions

My Green Pension is being built as a workplace pension platform where the default fund is screened from fossil fuels from day one. Not as an opt-in. Not as a "green fund" buried somewhere in the options. The default itself is climate-aligned and diversified.

We're building the technology with Rocketmakers, a certified B Corp. We're creating an integrated, values-aligned supply chain that I don't think anyone else in the UK pension market has assembled.

We're also designing a personal impact dashboard so that every saver will have clearer visibility into where their money is invested and the real-world difference it's making. Because transparency isn't just a nice-to-have in pensions - it's the thing that's been missing all along.

I should be clear: we're not live yet. My Green Pension is in development. We're pre-launch and working towards securing the regulatory authorisations we need to operate. Everything I'm sharing here is about what we're building and why, not a promise about a finished product.

But the need is real, the demand is there, and we're further along than I ever imagined we'd be when I was sitting up in bed that August morning, wondering whether to take the leap.

What nobody tells you about building a pension platform

I won't pretend this has been easy. Building a fintech startup as a solo female founder, with no pension industry background, and four children to raise. There have been moments where I've questioned everything.

There have been people who've told me I can't do it. I got off a call with one person feeling terrible. Their energy was so pessimistic that it seeped into my thinking for the rest of the day.

But here's what I've learned about myself through this process: I'm more resilient than I ever knew. Every time I've been knocked down or told I'm not good enough, I've found a way to keep going. And every time I've come back, the next step forward has been bigger than the one before.

My boys keep me grounded. My 13-year-old, Stanley, asks me regularly: is it working yet? And I say: not yet. But he gets it. He understands that the whole point is to make a positive change. My younger two worry about climate change; they learn about it at school, we talk about it at home. I don't love that they're anxious about it, but I'd rather they cared than didn't.

When I imagine the first employer going live on the platform, their employees seeing their impact dashboards for the first time… I know I'll cry. Every step of progress so far has made me well up, because each one proves that this is possible. That we're getting there.

What's next for My Green Pension, and why it matters

I'm building My Green Pension because I believe the pension industry is overdue for exactly this kind of disruption. Not the Silicon Valley kind. The kind that comes from someone seeing a broken system, feeling it personally, and deciding to do something about it.

The UK pension market holds trillions in assets. The majority of those assets are invested without any consideration for climate impact. And 96% of employees never make an active choice about where their pension goes.

We're aiming to change the default. To make responsible investment the starting point, not the afterthought. To give employers a pension that reflects the values they already hold. And to give every saver the transparency they deserve about where their money is and what it's doing.

My Green Pension is still early. We're building, we're learning, and we're doing it in public because I believe that's how trust gets built; not through polished launches, but through honest conversations about why this matters and how we're going to get there.

If you're an employer who wants a pension that matches your values, or someone who simply believes pensions should be better, I'd love to hear from you. This is just the beginning.

My Green Pension is a trading name of Earth Positive Wealth Ltd. My Green Pension is currently in development and is not yet authorised by the FCA. Nothing on this site constitutes a financial promotion, regulated advice, or an offer to provide pension services.