Improving my chance for getting Monzo Flex

Yes, I do, I’ve said this previously, monzo suggest that they also use open banking data along with other information provided by credit reference agencies to determine your affordability when offering financial services to customers.

Edit - My comments are based entirely on information take from Monzo’s website - open banking 101 - I am not saying that open banking is the main driver just that it’s used.

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Open banking isn’t the main driver. Credit files are.

I don’t have any linked accounts and I’m at the max available overdraft limit and an ok flex limit.

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Thanks. My score is really good and has been like this for around 18 months now.

I think Theon has helped me figure it out. I didn’t realise credit reference agencies had the ability to verify our income and because my income lands in my Business Starling account and all gets sent to my personal Revolut account where it then gets spread into Revolut pockets and sent to Monzo to Monzo pots which neither (Revolut and starling business) report to the credit reference agencies because Starling is a business account and Revolut is not an official bank there is probably no verification of my income.

Saying all this I have been accepted for various credit accounts from other places though in the last few years which I a curious to understand

It’s all good anyway I’m more just a geek and wanted to try out Monzo flex, don’t really need it



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Your score is pretty meaningless and lenders don’t get to see it, anyway. It’s how you manage your borrowing that’s most important. Each lender will have their own internal scoring system comprising many different factors and you may score highly with one lender but not reach the threshold with another.

Not much you can do but try another BNPL lender if that’s what you really want (e.g. Paypal, Klarna, Tymit).

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had some private feedback from monzo, seems the main obstacle is that my income is received to revolut who don’t report to the credit reference agencies so monzo could not verify my income. don’t really need the monzo flex as have a barclaycard and amex but once I get a flex will probably close my amex or barclaycard so more of my banking is done with monzo and not different apps.

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Do Credit Reference Agencies have a way of figuring someone’s income no idea it the case

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Yes - banks will report two data sets per month to the Credit Reference Agencies:

  1. Your account data - this is commonly referred to as your credit file or credit report and is what Credit ClearScore et al. will show you if you have an account with them.
  2. Your “current account turnover” data. This is effectively an aggregated view (rather than a view of individual transactions) of the inbound transactions into your current accounts each month. There’s kinda a bit more about this here (although not much).

Note - number 2 here has nothing to do with open banking (as alluded to above).

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Could you break it down for me please I have a hard time trying to understand all tht was written.
If that the case v beans sends such info what the use of open banking and lenders asking for bank statements thanks

Thanks for this, really insightful and all useful learning. I suggested that open banking data was used because this is what Monzo pretty much state in open banking 101 section of website -if this information isn’t correct it’s probably best it’s updated or removed so to avoid confusing folk like myself who are less “literate” on how banks like Monzo offer services to customers - your explanation was more explicit in clarifying the role of credit reference agencies.

Here’s what Monzo say

Prove your income to get an overdraft

Anytime you ask to borrow money with Monzo, we verify your income to make sure what we offer is affordable. We use a few sources of data to do this, including credit reference agencies and your Monzo transaction history. Sometimes these sources don’t give us enough information, meaning we may have to turn down your application.

But now you can use Open Banking to link to your other bank accounts, which can help us get the information we need to assess overdraft affordability. This means we can approve people who may have previously been turned down.”

hey - so that is also correct - there are multiple ways of verifying a customers income. At a high level what we do is:

  • Try verify a customers income using their Monzo transaction data. If we can’t do that…
  • Try verify a customers income using the credit reference agency data (which I explained above and has nothing to do with open banking). If we can’t do that…
  • Ask the customer to allow open banking during their overdraft application - Note: this has nothing to do with the plus/ premium connected accounts feature because our privacy policy means that we can’t use your connected accounts data for this purpose. Note that this open banking step doesn’t exist yet for Flex and loans but should do :soon:

I know it’s quite complex - but that’s a function of the regulation that lenders need to uphold :slight_smile:.

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Thank you for taking the time to explain things Theo, all really useful insights! :slightly_smiling_face: