Freedom Joins Microsoft for Startups to Accelerate Innovation and Growth

London, 11 June 2026 – Freedom, the leading retirement infrastructure provider, has announced its acceptance into Microsoft for Startups. This collaboration provides Freedom with access to powerful AI tools, Azure credits and a global customer network to help scale faster and smarter as the company continues growing its provider-linked retirement infrastructure platform across the UK pensions market.

Freedom is building a modern, banking-style pensions experience designed to help providers remain connected to members throughout retirement through its white-labelled platform, keeping assets invested and visible. Its integration with Visa will enable real-time member access to pensions through a Visa card that can be used both in the UK and abroad, preventing retirement balances from being externalised to third-party banks.

“Joining Microsoft for Startups is an important milestone for Freedom as we continue building the infrastructure layer for modern retirement,” said David Brown, Founder of Freedom. “Retirement has increasingly become a digitally connected financial experience, but much of the infrastructure supporting decumulation was not designed for how people actually access and manage money today. Microsoft’s cloud and AI capabilities will help us scale our platform, continue onboarding pension providers, and deepen regulated banking and payments integration.”

The announcement comes as the UK pensions industry faces growing pressure to improve retirement engagement and decumulation outcomes amid an ageing population. More than £1bn a day is withdrawn from pensions and transferred to retail banks as members seek simpler, more flexible access to their money, with providers losing long-term visibility and engagement as a result.

Freedom’s Retirement-as-a-Service model is designed to help providers address this structural challenge by creating more integrated retirement experiences connected to the pension provider following regulated withdrawal processes.

The business has already announced Alltrust as its first client and continues discussions with additional pension providers across the UK market.

“Microsoft for Startups empowers founders to build fast, scale smart, and sell more. By tapping into Azure’s advanced AI capabilities and enterprise-grade infrastructure, startups can accelerate innovation and bring impactful solutions to market. We’re excited to collaborate with Freedom as they drive transformation in the retirement space," said Hans Yang, VP, Microsoft for Startups.

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