Insights from customer's anonymous spending data

It would be great if users spending habits could be shared anonymously amongst all its users. For instance how much was the average electricity bill last month. How much on average are people paying on their weekly food bill.

I’d find it really interesting and useful to see how my spending habits compare to everyone else’s. For instance if my energy bill was a lot higher than most then that’s something I might choose to look at. If my grocery shopping is very high maybe I would consider shopping somewhere else. There’s lot of useful information that’s hidden at the moment that could prove to be really useful.

Are there any plans to enable this sort of service?

Thanks

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I’m pretty sure that exactly the type of feature that Hugo was referring to, in this comment that’s buried away here :tada: -

I think this could be a really powerful feature too!

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At the moment, we haven’t any immediate plans to have this in the app, although as of next year we’ll be creating a lot more infographic content offering nuggets of insight on our users spending habits.

Anonymous spending data will be useful if we explore the idea of creating a marketplace where Monzo partners with other businesses who have an open API to offer users targeted intelligent suggestions. At this stage if a user was to opt in, there’s a possibility we could give them an overview on how others in the same location for example, have saved money in the Bills category by using a different energy provider. That’s a while off yet though, although I’m sure there will be a few earlier incarnations of the same ilk within the app which before we reach this :slightly_smiling_face:

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The accuracy of the comparison would be improved if it were aware of the number of people supported by the grocery shopping plus the size of the house when comparing gas and electricity bills.

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Personally am leary of anything that works via averaging… Average with who ?? What group ?? Etc…

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What would you find useful?

Was that a question directed at me ??

I guess I perceive the banking side differently… I dont want to know anything about any one elses spending, I dont see value in that, or see how my spending is relevant to others… Shopping at harrods or lidl ?? I tend to think of Monzo beyond this rollout as a bank, a bank that would cater to the public, rather than some niche millennial kind of thing were I have any assumption someone else may have any similarity to me. How the spending patterns of a single mum relate to investment banker I struggle to see…

What is useful or appealing to me is managing my own affairs… A web interface to my account… Multi currency wallets (default spending my EUR when in Europe, default spending my USD when in the states, etc)… Aspects outside the scope of this suggestion of course.

I merely meant there seems to be an assumed commonality stated here… And I think in its early adopter set thats possibly correct… But the assumption should become less valid over time not moreso.

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Yes it was :slight_smile:

Firstly - you haven’t mentioned this but it’s worth covering off now for anyone else who gets involved in the conversation - let’s assume that this feature (which is likely to be developed) will be opt in or you’ll at least be able to opt out.
There’s no point in complaining about not wanting to be sent annoying notifications / recommendations until we know that Monzo is planning to take that approach & I’d be very surprised if they make this feature annoying or intrusive.

Now that that’s out the way…here’s a couple of ‘insights’ that I’ve thought of (from posts which have received an ever illusive ‘like’ from Hugo so I might be on the right track)…

The point is Monzo will end up being able to create a pretty detailed profile of you based on your age, location, what you buy, where (location & merchant), how much you spend per purchase on average, how much you spend per month on average etc. so they should be able to find people who are similar to you, to compare your purchases with.
As you probably know, most social media sites do this already (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc.) but rather than finding the content that you’re most likely to be interested in, Monzo will be spotting ways that you can save money which sounds pretty good to me :pound: :pound: :pound:

This feature isn’t even on the roadmap yet so I wouldn’t worry about it’s development getting in the way of other improvements :beach:

I prepare to be convinced :wink: I just still dont really feel it… We shall see…

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