It’s fine to prefer monzo, but acting like they’re miles apart when it’s clear they are not, that’s not fine 
And thanks! Good to be back.
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I’ve always found Chase quite sluggish, on Android, but I haven’t had that problem with Lloyds, Halifax, or First Direct.
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I suspect by “high street banks” they really mean Barclays. I as others have not had any issues with nearly all the main banks.
In fact I’ve found Lloyds, HSBC and FD to be faster to use at times.
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Thanks. I haven’t had a chance to check what has been happening here for a bit (basically just had too much going on in “real life”) and happened to see this thread when I checked in earlier today. As you said, here we are!
I agree I wouldn’t have revived a 7 year old thread myself, but I don’t agree that the banking market is now at some kind of final state which won’t change. Yes, there has been a period of stagnation recently, but arguably that has been explained by a few different factors. I would highlight Covid as one major one (as with everything) which disrupted funding, operations and the plans of many businesses - especially banks given record low interest rates during the Covid time. I know Starling and others did well from the various government-backed loan schemes but the wider businesses of all fintechs were seriously disrupted. The other point is that the big banks were, as you say, trying to catch up and simultaneously the fintechs were transitioning from start-ups to established businesses. Both these things seemed to happen almost at once, so pure product innovation took a backseat for different reasons at all banks.
We are entering into a difficult economic period now, it seems, so belt-tightening has been going on. I think this is likely to further expose weaker challengers such as Metro Bank and we may see them disappear (likely bought by another bank). Even Starling could be bought up, given their regulatory problems which are currently stifling the business. Sainsbury’s Bank is going and will transition to NatWest. Tesco Bank has been sold to Barclays, and seems to be continuing only in a small-scale way. It would be a real shame if economic pressure meant that the fintech experiment of proper competition in the banking sector ended with very few banks in a very similar priced, similar product setup.
The way I see it, people traditionally chose a bank based on a branch being near to them and convenient to use. Many of those customers have now lost that branch but stay loyal to “their bank”. That can’t go on forever as it isn’t a strategy that acquires customers. Even switching bonuses don’t really work to attract large numbers of new customers, as many people are too scared to switch to their main account. So I wonder if we are in the “calm before the storm”, where eventually banks will be forced to innovate again to differentiate themselves in a digital market. That was how fintechs originally started - almost viral marketing through friends and acquaintances because the app was so much radically better than what was accepted as alright from banks before.
Like how Steve Jobs famously said that people don’t know what they want until you show them. People didn’t know they wanted a simple and instant, always up-to-date banking app until they saw Monzo/Revolut/Starling.
As branches are no longer a consideration, people will chose a bank based on recommendations or killer features (Monzo split the bill was arguably one of those; Monzo.me perhaps another). I am not convinced that the last killer feature has already appeared. The next will come out of the blue, and we won’t know we wanted it until we have it!
PS: Welcome back @Carlo1460, always good to see you posting. Since I’ve been out of the loop, I didn’t realised you’d been in a time-out. But glad you are past it now!
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Can you name a bank you haven’t been with?
I was actually considering creating a list of all UK current accounts avaliable, as I’m starting to think I’ve had them all! Would that sound interesting to you if I started a thread?
Currently only got Revolut and NatWest - an optimal blend of old and new imo. But I wish I’d kept a few others open from the past.
Ooh, no doubt some will be able to outdo me!
I haven’t bothered to go to Northern Ireland specially to open it, so AIB is one.
Northern Ireland is a very nice place, and I enjoyed my visit there when I did go on holiday, but I didn’t make time to go to a branch appointment, haha.
Why not? Sounds like a bit of a project!
Belfast is an underrated travel destination. I think you can open AIB by phone but it says something about needing to be an existing customer.
What about Bank of Ireland?
Great I’ll fire it up and we can fill in the blanks 
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PS: On this, I forgot to mention that a parallel to the “technology gap” of legacy banks trying to adapt to be as good as/equivalent to fintechs, from the perspective of the user, is the “features gap” from fintech to traditional banks. Niche or unusual things often still aren’t possible and many niche things (such as multiple signatory accounts, handling of Power of Attorney, etc) are only available or only handled as a full service properly by traditional banks.
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Yes, Belfast is well worth a visit!
AIB is available in two flavours. There’s AIB (GB) and AIB (NI) - formerly First Trust Bank.
AIB GB does business banking and will do all the regular KYC/IDV checks for business account opening but then also offer to let you open personal accounts without the need to supply further paperwork; they obviously use a mixture of stuff you have already supplied and data held on you as an existing customer to do this. However, you can’t apply unless you are an existing business customer, so there is no direct personal application capability.
AIB NI appears a bit technologically-challenged and they do not have the ability to process account applications electronically. Nothing in their paperwork explicitly excludes GB applicants, but as part of account opening you have to attend a branch and supply proof of address and ID for manual processing. Interestingly, once you have done this you can then apply for further accounts by sending a form in the post. So you only need to do it once!
As for Bank of Ireland, I did try to open a current account with them but they rejected me. Perhaps they wondered why I would want an account if I lived in England! I did manage to open a savings account with them though, so I was able to check out their app which I was curious about. It was very basic and not very interesting so not really worth bothering with.
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I don’t think I said that. I said that we seem, based on available products, to have reached a point in time where the legacy banks have, as said, continued plodding along and modernising as they go, and FinTech have become clones.
I can’t think of a single Fintech entity of late that in terms of banking, hasn’t just been another version of Revolut, Monzo et al. I agree that it will change, but by how much?
I’m not too sure about this one. I think it’s key to remember that for the vast majority of people, banking is super boring and they don’t care what the app does. Money goes in, Money goes out.
For those that do, there’s here, Monzo, Reddit. But that (and I don’t have actual numbers here) I bet is around <10% of the population of the Uk
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I thought you implied it, maybe it wasn’t what you meant at all. Sorry.
I tend to think that improvements will still happen, and fintechs will still be able to be quicker to execute on them. Irrelevance of branches does level the playing field quite a bit, so there should be interesting times ahead still.
We’ll see!
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No issues, words can easily be misread on the internet. Tone is hard to infer, so I didn’t but see why others might’ve thought that.
Indeed!
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Of course, it’s always difficult to avoid confusion online.
The point about whether fintechs will broaden their product line-up is significant, as if they don’t they will always be niche to a certain extent.
Somebody opening their first ever bank account, assuming their parents didn’t open it for them, is the market all banks need to appeal to in my view.
After that, as you say, little motivates people to try anything new.