Britain's Monzo cutting up to 120 jobs due to coronavirus impact

So many great staff already left or openly talking on twitter about other plans. I’m a little worried for the future of Monzo.

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Very saddened for the staff this will impact. I’m sure Monzo is a great brand to have on your CV. I hope these people land a new role quickly.

This is another huge blow to my confidence in Monzo’s future

  • 120 jobs to go because of Covid (above post)
  • 165 people already let go in the vegas office for cost saving measures. See first paragraph in this TechCrunch article
  • Tom sacrificing his salary for a year
  • Senior management team and board have volunteered to take a 25% cut in salary. See above link
  • Burying the chat option which should reduce inbound demand and cut cost. Big blow to one of Monzo’s main competitive advantages imo. Their customer support was winning awards before they made this move. They could still win more though! It remains to be seen with this move.
  • Huge senior management turnover in a year. See section 4 over here.
  • The accidental omission of stock sales from Company house until a member of the public complains to companies house.
  • Facing a 40% down round which no other fintech bank is facing this (I know the timing of the raise is probably a reason for this).
  • No new features launched recently that their competitors don’t already do a better version than (business banking).
  • Tom stepping down as CEO at the same time of all of this. I do hope he is going to make a big impact on product and community with this move

This is all just in the last few months by the way. It doesn’t paint a pretty picture, but it is a startup. If they close this funding round, they can leave that behind and hopefully ride through Covid-19 and out the other end to increasing revenue.

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could this mean the end for monzo

No

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is anyone sure about this tho i really like having monzo as my main account and would be really upset if it was to go

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Can I have the lottery numbers for Friday please?

Does it mean the end of Monzo? Very unlikely, but lets not pretend you (or I) have any inside knowledge. IF, and it is a BIG IF there were major problems, they would just get bought up - which could mean the end of the brand.

But it is certainly nothing to be worried about. They are of course a bank, and therefore money is protected up to the usual amount. What Monzo do not need is people scare-mongering and withdrawing.

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i aint scare-mongering

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Sorry don’t want to get specific for obvious reasons. Hopefully monzo will do fine but they have had huge churn in staff in the last year - many of the original staff have left and this year has not been kind, with job cuts, valuation cut and many of the original staff leaving.

I’m going to stick with it as my main bank and see how it goes.

My opinion (based on what keeps happening to airlines) is it’s uninformed speculation that tends to be the killer.

Many companies are making redundancies. Let’s look at this in the wider economic context, and not draw rash conclusions.

(Disclaimer: I don’t have any inside knowledge and I wouldn’t be allowed to share it if I did. I have a significant financial interest in the value of my shares. Take my opinions based on that)

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no one is making rash conclusions.

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Most companies who are in temporary difficulty are putting employees on furlough in preference to redundancies (though, yes some are being made redundant)

It’s interesting to see that if the Reuters article is correct (no reason it shouldn’t be) Monzo have decided on redundancies rather than put the affected staff on furlough

Didn’t realise the headcount was that big, so I can understand some rationalising of it at the present time.

Burn rate is going to be something any VC supported business needs to watch, and this is a way to do it.

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Yes, quite possibly a condition of the recent round was that burn rate and headcount drops significantly (and that senior employee X takes a new role)

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And when the furlough ends, then the decisions which are postponed now will have to be made.

It’s a wider thing, I don’t see with social distancing and the missing spending power of the over 50s there won’t be a massive round of redundancy in September/October. Likewise without younger workers not returning to the office any time soon, will spend on cards increase.

I’m pretty bullish on Monzo long term, the model in a world which will be more cashless and doesn’t have a massive legacy of branches should be a good one. VCs need to go long too, I suspect they will

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I think ‘No’ is a fair answer at this point since the question relates to this specific story. These redundancies don’t spell the end of the company.

Longer term is anyone’s guess but that’s been the case for ages.

Edit: And to the post above this, what do you know about over 50s spending power that I don’t?

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To be fair, nobody said ‘yes’.

Curious about over 50 spending too.

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That’s the whole purpose and stated aim of the furlough scheme though - to delay as many redundancies until November - in the hope/expectation that the economy will be in better shape than the last two months.

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It might be worth noting that a company is legally required to give 45 days notice to those at risk of redundancy. It doesn’t mean those redundancies will ultimately be made, or won’t otherwise be delayed.

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If Monzo believe that those jobs will not be viable in six months time, there is no reason from a business point of view to keep them furloughed until then.

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