Only have Monzo personal accounts for a couple of months… soooooooo good, I’ve recommended it to everyone I know. Life is so much more stress free because I don’t have to deal with high street banks. Now on the waiting list for a business account. I wait with interest to see if Monzo will maintain its ethical bank ranking, or become like the rest over time. If it does I will return to Triodos and its clunky conventional systems. Hopefully it Monzo will reach for the ethical stars : )
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What exactly is it that makes Monzo ethical?
Back when Monzo was called Mondo…
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I’m just a consumer… I know ethical rankings are complicated and probably contentious but there are a few websites that explain how ethical rankings are scored, including this one… https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/money-finance/shopping-guide/current-accounts
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How ethical is Triodos?
Usually at the top of the league table, or near it - I left because they didn’t provide a business debit card. I recommend you Google the subject, my knowledge is limited to that. What is clear is that nearly all the UK high street banks are near the bottom of the table.
Cheers
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Ethical is of course subjective to some extent.
The basis on which Monzo is judged to be ethical is that it hasn’t done anything unethical when it comes to investments and appears to be doing the right things. However, Monzo doesn’t have any investments yet so it’s a case of lack of evidence rather than evidence of positive lending. It has however teamed up with savings providers who may have unethical investments so what they need is a supply chain policy.
This is all very different to Triodos which has a policy of only lending to businesses it feels are ethical and making positive change and listing them all on their website so people can also judge for themselves. I’m not currently a Triodos customer but have been in the past and have always been impressed with their customer service.
Nationwide will make an interesting contender when they launch business accounts.
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Personally very keen on this. Not seeing investment policies is the reason I’ve avoided savings pots so far.
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I have savings with one of their providers (Charter) directly. I’ve specifically asked them how they use the savings and they said that it was solely for bridging loans and mortgages. Now, depending on how you feel about which companies they might lend to for mortgages and the property business in general you might consider this ethical. It didn’t raise any significant concerns for me which is why I was OK with having savings with them.
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I am considering moving from Co-op but i just asked about the investments, twice I was told the ethics and they don’t invest in arms/carbon etc - but then I was informed by Monzo they use three other banks to do their investments - and they weren’t aware of the ethics of those banks. Now I’m slightly confused/peeved that they would say ‘they don’t invest in arms’ but can’t answer whether the company they are using my money in a third party as - they’ve done no research. And if they have they havent’ shared it - as they just said ‘thats all we know’.
also from ethical consumer ‘Nevertheless, they are all backed by individual investors and venture capitalists who may hold investments across a wide range of other industries.
No company had any information or policies about the environmental impacts of its operations. In particular it is disappointing that none of the companies mention the use of data centres which require large amounts of energy.’
Anyone else had an joy - cos i’m very close to jumping ship on Co-op but not at the expense of funding guns!
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I think it’s actually five not three, but your money won’t been put with them unless you decide to open a savings pot with the particular provider.
Monzo make it very transparent which savings pot is with the provider.
As for the money held with Monzo, they don’t invest in guns. I’m not surprised they don’t want to comment on these savings providers as its not up to them to monitor their activity.
- https://www.paragonbank.co.uk/
- https://www.shawbrook.co.uk/
- https://www.oaknorth.com/
- https://www.investec.com/
- https://www.chartersavingsbank.co.uk/
Current Ethics and values statement is always here if its helps
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Phil’s answer is correct. Here at Monzo we do not invest in guns (or anything else for that matter right now, all the deposits we hold are only in the BoE).
However, we do offer a range of third-party interest-bearing savings pots, and those are held with the banks mentioned above, so if that’s a product you’re interested in, then it’d be worth digging into their ethics if that’s something that you’d like to be aware of.
If you don’t intend on opening a third party Pot, then there’s nothing to worry about 
In addition @HannahSM you could have a Monzo for your salary and spend, and if you wanted to 100% make sure any savings were Ethical then choose a provider like Triodos who go above and beyond (you’ll get less interest compared to other non-ethical providers)
or keep your savings with Co-op still if you already have any there.
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Thats useful - its just super disappointing that Monzo haven’t done the ethical digging - its hard enough as it is banking - let alone adding giving a sh*t to the mix. Its the only time i’ve been disappointed. Also - are we saying my ‘pots’ then are just there - money not going to third party.
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We’re all interested in this and we all want to make sure our money is not used to profit unethical companies, activities or countries…equally I like Monzo so far so would rather influence them rather than leave because their ethical policy is weak.
We should all put Monzo under pressure to put a clear and obvious ‘ethical health warning’ on any savings pots - like a warning on a cigarette packet, but on the pot image in the app - that are not deemed completely ethical (for example, no investment in fossil fuel companies, or traders in arms, tobacco and alcohol, or financial companies that deal with them) by an independent consumer ethics organisation.
In addition to that, we should pressure Monzo into coming up with a clear, detailed, positive and specific ethics and environmental policy that is in tune with the values of the swelling memberships of Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion.
Come on Monzo, it makes sense and the timing is perfect…
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Happy to invest a portion of my money in a green manner, but as a general rule, couldn’t really care what happens to the cash portion of my savings as they are so small.
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Yea pretty sure they cannot do this because it’ll be against their business agreement with those saving partners etc. Meaning that if and when those partners see that Monzo are putting “un-ethical” badges on their products, they’ll not want to do business with monzo because of that
I agree that more needs to be done to help minimise our environmental impacts but I wouldn’t want them mixing in what Extinction Rebellion are doing (in some places) with banking, and would rather them just improve on how green/ethical they are in general with their business operations.
Correct 
You have a choice of which pot type to create.
A normal pot will stay with Monzo but any other will be invested with one of the companies that was listed 
It tells you which company on the pot creation screen.
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Obviously we aren’t going to slap a big warning on a third-party Pot 
However, we have talked in the past about the idea of companies that are partnered with us being weighted by score. The score might include their level of customer service/support, it could well include how green they are, etc.
At the moment we just don’t have enough partners to make this worth doing.
But it’s an interesting premise. Ultimately, if you have a huge amount of partners, then without some sort of system in place it would just end up as a race to the bottom, because the interest rate, or low price would be the only way to gauge one company against another.
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Ok if not an unethical health warning, how about a pot with an ‘ethical health banner’.
I’m running fairly new accounts with both Starling and Monzo and may open with other new similar banks. After the next 12 months I will look at the ethical policies and rankings and stay with the one who is doing the most in that area.
I’m really enjoying the Monzo experience…joyful to leave behind the UK high-street banks and their total lack of concern about ethical issues. The new banks have created a great opportunity to do things differently…
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