Affordable Retirement Plans for Businesses of all Sizes
No one should get a cut of your retirement.
Save an average of $200,000 more with a Penelope plan with our predictable and transparent pricing.
Our mission is personal
We wanted to see change, so we decided to create it. We are building the retirement solution we would want for our parents, our children, and ourselves.
Built for small business
From our plan to our platform, we design for your needs. We advocate for small businesses each and every day in an industry that caters to large corporations.
Simple is powerful
We are bypassing everything that makes financial services complex to get you the knowledge that you need, so that you can take your future into your own hands.
How it started
Our Founding Story
Jean Smart, the founder and CEO of Penelope, is a former Wall Street executive, who worked in financial services for 20+ years, most recently as the managing director, head of business strategy, corporate and institutional advisory solutions at UBS.
Jean was inspired to launch Penelope at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic after watching small businesses struggle. She is the daughter of immigrant parents—owners of a grocery store and restaurant in Los Angeles. Growing up, Jean watched her parents care for their family and employees, but they were unable to invest in their own retirement, leaving them vulnerable in old age.
Jean knows her parents are not alone in their struggles to save. There’s a retirement crisis looming in the U.S. There are 57 million U.S. workers without a company-sponsored retirement plan. And many older Americans who are reaching retirement age simply don’t have enough saved for retirement.
But there’s increasing awareness of this retirement crisis, and thanks to state retirement mandates and Secure 2.0, we are seeing changes. And Penelope is at the forefront of this movement with our affordable and simple 401(k) plans.
Jean’s deep knowledge of the industry informs the technology she is building at Penelope as she looks to disrupt a sector that’s struggling to modernize old systems.
