Digital advice firm OpenMoney has acquired Jargonfree Benefits (JFB), the employee benefits business set up by pensions guru and cartoonist Steve Bee.

The deal, completed last week, will see JFB become part of the OpenMoney group of companies.

JFB founder Steve Bee and director Andrew Rice will continue to hold key roles in the business, says OpenMoney.

Mr Bee set up JFB in 2013 with the aim of helping 16m workers at small or medium-sized companies (SMEs) gain access to the same standard of workplace benefits as those available to workers at larger firms.

The new parent business aims to use its resources to enable JFB to improve its offering while developing innovations in employee benefits.

OpenMoney was set up to offer “affordable, personalised advice” from a qualified adviser to those with more modest amounts. Launched in 2016 by Anthony Morrow, it aims to combine expert financial advice with online tools.

Chief executive Mr Morrow says: “While there is no single way to address the advice gap in this country, we believe technology and the workplace have huge roles to play, which is why the deal to acquire Jargonfree Benefits makes sense to us.

“The work Steve and the team do will complement perfectly what we are doing at OpenMoney - making affordable, personalised advice available to the masses.”

Mr Bee said: “We’ve got a long way to go, but I’m confident that as part of OpenMoney we can make huge strides in building the benefits market for SMEs and in doing so ensure high quality affordable financial advice might one day become accessible to every worker in the UK.”  

OpenMoney is an online financial advice service which combines technology and human advisers. It is backed by Duncan Cameron, MoneySuperMarket.com co-founder, and Anthony Morrow. Mr Morrow is a founding partner of discretionary fund manager Tatton Asset Management and was a consultant at both Arthur Anderson and KPMG.