Pensions,
according to AI
Every week we ask ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini the questions real UK consumers ask about pensions — and record exactly which brands they put forward. Right now, AJ Bell owns the conversation.
0 AI answers this run · 0 brands named · measured, never estimated
AJ Bell is the default answer.
Named in 10% of pensions answers, typically in position 1.3. Hargreaves Lansdown follows at 10%, Vanguard at 8%.
Every brand AI names, ranked.
Visibility is the share of answers naming the brand; citation share is its slice of all brand-owned pages cited; read→cited is how often its pages convert a read into a citation.
| # | Brand | Visibility | Avg. position | Citation share | Read→cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AJ Bell | 10% | 1.3 | 7% | 8% |
| 2 | Hargreaves Lansdown | 10% | 2.3 | 11% | 50% |
| 3 | Vanguard | 8% | 2.2 | 0% | — |
| 4 | Interactive Investor | 8% | 3.4 | 8% | 43% |
| 5 | Aviva | 7% | 2.0 | 14% | 100% |
| 6 | Legal & General | 5% | 2.3 | 8% | 100% |
| 7 | Scottish Widows | 5% | 3.0 | 7% | — |
| 8 | NEST | 3% | 2.5 | 4% | — |
| 9 | Aegon | 3% | 3.0 | 5% | 100% |
| 10 | Fidelity International | 3% | 3.0 | 8% | 50% |
| 11 | PensionBee | 3% | 4.5 | 9% | 29% |
| 12 | Smart Pension | 2% | 1.0 | 0% | — |
| 13 | Freetrade | 2% | 5.0 | 0% | — |
| 14 | InvestEngine | 2% | 6.0 | 0% | 0% |
| 15 | Canada Life | 0% | — | 4% | 0% |
The referees of pensions.
The independent sources AI models cite when answering pensions questions — the places a brand needs to be seen, reviewed and ranked.
Hargreaves Lansdown converts reads into citations. AJ Bell doesn't.
When Claude or ChatGPT opens a brand's own pages while answering, does the page make the cited-sources list? Hargreaves Lansdown converts 50% of reads; AJ Bell just 8%. That gap is a content problem, not a visibility problem.
Full data table
| # | Brand | Visibility | Avg. position | Citation share | Read→cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AJ Bell | 10% | 1.3 | 7% | 8% |
| 2 | Hargreaves Lansdown | 10% | 2.3 | 11% | 50% |
| 3 | Vanguard | 8% | 2.2 | 0% | — |
| 4 | Interactive Investor | 8% | 3.4 | 8% | 43% |
| 5 | Aviva | 7% | 2.0 | 14% | 100% |
| 6 | Legal & General | 5% | 2.3 | 8% | 100% |
| 7 | Scottish Widows | 5% | 3.0 | 7% | — |
| 8 | NEST | 3% | 2.5 | 4% | — |
| 9 | Aegon | 3% | 3.0 | 5% | 100% |
| 10 | Fidelity International | 3% | 3.0 | 8% | 50% |
| 11 | PensionBee | 3% | 4.5 | 9% | 29% |
| 12 | Smart Pension | 2% | 1.0 | 0% | — |
| 13 | Freetrade | 2% | 5.0 | 0% | — |
| 14 | InvestEngine | 2% | 6.0 | 0% | 0% |
| 15 | Canada Life | 0% | — | 4% | 0% |
Three models. Three different answers.
Ask about pensions and the brand you are shown depends on the assistant: Claude → Vanguard, Gemini → Interactive Investor, ChatGPT → AJ Bell. Their top-five lists share just 33% of names.
Brands whose visibility swings most between models — the bar per model, widest gap on the right.
The data behind this chart
| Brand | Claude | Gemini | ChatGPT | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vanguard | 15% | 10% | 0% | 15pp |
| Fidelity International | 10% | 0% | 0% | 10pp |
| AJ Bell | 10% | 15% | 5% | 10pp |
| Hargreaves Lansdown | 10% | 15% | 5% | 10pp |
| Interactive Investor | 5% | 15% | 5% | 10pp |
| Aegon | 0% | 10% | 0% | 10pp |
| Scottish Widows | 0% | 10% | 5% | 10pp |
| NEST | 5% | 5% | 0% | 5pp |
| Aviva | 5% | 10% | 5% | 5pp |
| PensionBee | 5% | 5% | 0% | 5pp |
Editorial carry pensions.
Every page AI opened while answering, classified by what kind of page it is. Editorial supply the most citations; How-to guides convert best — 97% of the ones models opened were actually cited.
The data behind this chart
| Page type | Cited | Read but not cited | Conversion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Editorial | 107 | 5 | 96% |
| How-to guides | 68 | 2 | 97% |
| Comparisons | 25 | 1 | 96% |
| Documentation | 19 | 2 | 90% |
| Product pages | 10 | 1 | 91% |
| Other | 9 | 5 | 64% |
Answer up front is what separates cited from ignored.
Of the pensions pages models actually opened, how much more often each feature's pages ended up in the cited sources. Answer up front is worth 7 percentage points; hard statistics pages fare 9pp worse. Measured within the read population, so selection can't flatter it.
The data behind this chart
| Feature | Pages with | Cited % | Pages without | Cited % | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Answer up front | 180 | 96% | 115 | 89% | +7pp |
| Structured data | 234 | 94% | 61 | 90% | +3pp |
| Comparison table | 82 | 95% | 213 | 92% | +3pp |
| Updated this year | 122 | 92% | 173 | 94% | -2pp |
| Named author | 128 | 91% | 167 | 94% | -3pp |
| Hard statistics | 144 | 88% | 151 | 97% | -9pp |
Freetrade builds pages AI can quote.
Readiness scores each brand's own pages on the structure models reward — a direct answer up front, tables, hard numbers, named authors, structured data, recency, specifications. Wealthify is the widest gap: well-built pages that still aren't converting into citations.
| Brand | Readiness | Pages cited | Pages profiled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Freetrade | 59 | 25% | 4 |
| Wealthify | 54 | 0% | 3 |
| PensionBee | 51 | 25% | 36 |
| Legal & General | 48 | 4% | 46 |
| LV= | 48 | 0% | 5 |
| Standard Life | 45 | 14% | 29 |
| InvestEngine | 40 | 0% | 5 |
| AJ Bell | 37 | 1% | 142 |
| Scottish Widows | 36 | 20% | 10 |
| Royal London | 35 | 6% | 50 |
Readiness is the share of eight measurable structural signals present on a brand's profiled pages. It is a build-quality measure, not a ranking of the brand.
The questions pensions pages have to settle.
Read straight off the pages AI cited: the consumer questions cited content answers most often. Content that fails to settle these is content models have no reason to quote.
Nineteen more categories.
Method: 20 unbranded consumer prompts per category, spread across the buying journey, run weekly against ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Read→cited uses Claude and ChatGPT only (Gemini does not separate the two). Correlational observations of model behaviour at the time of the run. Data from the run completed Thu, 08 Oct 2026 07:18:42 GMT.