Making Overdrafts Available

As far as I’m aware, @anon44204028. Everyone who is eligible for the Overdraft is awarded the £1000 overdraft, you just amend yourself how much you want.

[EDIT] - The above details are incorrect, and value is awarded individually. So I look forward to seeing how this will work and if I will actually be eligible :slight_smile:

My legacy bank will only award me with £50 (as a buffer amount) due to my credit history, with this in mind, Monzo will not award me a £50 overdraft but a £1000 one - thus why I am unhopeful at this stage haha.

Transparency wise, even if they can just advise the credit score they are looking for with CallCredit, at least we can know if we are working in the right direction - no direct feedback on the items, but knowing what they are looking for would be helpful :slight_smile:

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Or £500 or in between or lower, not everyone got £1000

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This is not true I don’t think, I got £100 overdraft (don’t need more). But they don’t just blanket give everyone £1000.

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I tried it over the weekend and it came up with a “not eligible” notice.

Given the blog post I had another look today. Today, it came up with a question asking for my annual income and then a guide on how I put my salary in. This seemed a little strange as my salary has been going into Monzo for the last 6 months or so (and presumably this would substantiate the income figure given)?

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Not necessarily. You could have 2 jobs and only use Monzo for 1 of them, retaining a legacy bank for the other. Form is just generic

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A few answers — please keep the questions coming!

We give you a ‘shadow limit’ in the background which is the maximum amount you can pick. This is based on factors like your credit score and our internal data about you. You can’t select an overdraft larger than this amount — but we’ll continually review it too.

This isn’t quite true. If you’re not eligible, we now tell you why you’re not eligible (things like credit score, bankruptcy, CCJs etc). There are some “ineligibility reasons” for which we don’t specifically tell you yet — in these cases you’ll get a generic ineligible message. We’ll add more over time — it’s a case of going down the most frequent reasons first.

We’re very keen to be extremely transparent around this, as far as we possibly can. I hope my answers clear up any misunderstandings!

Yep, totally agreed this is a little strange! As with everything at Monzo, it’s an ongoing project and so over time we’ll get much smarter about knowing your salary — for now, we ask some people to manually input it to help us substantiate our data.

Hope that helps :slight_smile: Shout with more questions! I’m really excited to get this in the hands of more people and demystify the world of overdrafts somewhat.

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From what I can tell, the maximum you can get will depend on the information Monzo gets from you (I had to put in my annual salary). You can then choose an overdraft amount lower than the maximum Monzo thinks is appropriate.

As for explaining why you’ve been declined, this isn’t something businesses usually do. Revealing acceptance criteria is seen as a “poor business decision” as other lenders would start undercutting, etc. I got refused the iPhone Upgrade Programme, and the only information I got from Barclays (who are the lender in the scheme in the UK) was “look at your credit report”. I then got accepted for a zero interest credit card to pay for it instead. I’m hoping Monzo will be a little better than that, but wouldn’t be surprised if there’s limited info.

EDIT: tristan got in there just as I was posting :laughing:

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Me too. Although now after a few hours I get the generic ineligible notice again.

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Have just battled through the annoying automatic overdraft facility first direct give, and due to the less visual and useable app have been hit by charges.

The optional Overdraft monzo provide is great and very useful.

I’ve turned it on initially and during a period of fraud on my card turned it off.

New card arrived and it’s back on!

Not sure if this affects my credit score but it’s great functionality

One of the things I saw which was cool during setup was that there won’t be additional entries on your credit report if you turn it off and on within a 3 month window (maybe different wording, but something like that).

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The ‘shadow limit’ is interesting

Is the user aware of this? I.e given a max amount they can apply for? Or simply trial and errror by gradually increasing overdraft until reached ‘shadow limit’

The latter, your shadow limit will be available during your sign up, and it will be the max you can apply for.

So Monzo says ‘eligible for an overdraft up to x amount’?

X being the shadow limit

It’s pretty much as @anon95680666 posted

https://community.monzo.com/t/making-overdrafts-available/35993/6

If you continue to hit the plus button, you’ll hit your shadow limit

I’d quite like a “Pay outstanding overdraft fees now” option. I tend to go overdrawn on the first couple of days of the month (as I bill clients on the last Wednesday of the month, they then take a few days to pay and then Cater Allen takes a few days to send the payment) and I’d rather not continually see the “£1 overdraft fee to be paid in 28 days” message counting down all month.

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I really like that you can see your possible OD limit before applying it to the account. Too often with banks you have to apply for an amount, get declined, try again for a smaller amount, get approved and then wonder if you could have had a larger amount

My main bank for example I applied for the account and as a part of that process I asked for a small overdraft which was granted. However that then leaves me wondering could I have asked them for more? Only way to find out with them is to go in branch or ring up. Not a problem with monzo

You could go one further and have a screen as a part of the process saying “you can apply for an overdraft limit of up to £xxxxx”. Would stop people having to keep tapping up in £50 increments to see what limit you are willing to grant

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  • high five, Monzo *
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So I just got a notification saying I am eligible for an overdraft :blush: but the UX is odd.

The notification took me to my transactions. And there is a feed item. Selecting this takes me to more info about being eligible but then the only option is ‘Home’ that takes be back to transactions with the feed item. It feels like there should be two buttons ‘Apply’ and ‘Home’ otherwise you have to go searching for how to enable the overdraft.

Just had the same notification here. It did seem a little odd that I had to separately go into the account section, you think it would link automatically from the feed item.

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Yep, I know it’s all very new and they’re just starting to roll it out fully, but my experience wasn’t very Monzo on this:

  1. Ages ago I registered interest in an overdraft (I have moved salary and all direct debits as soon as I got my account, so overdraft function was the only thing I was missing)
  2. Didn’t hear anything for ages and have been continually checking this blog for updates
  3. Got excited yesterday when I saw that roll-outs were happening this week and that if you had IOS (which I do) you could apply for an overdraft in app
  4. Applied – asked me for my salarly, then got rejected (generic response)
  5. Asked for some more info in app through the help as I thought it was a little strange, and was told that they couldn’t give me a reason but it was likely because they were just being cautious initially
  6. I hit the button anyway saying “let me know if I can be given an overdraft in the future” (or something to that affect)
  7. Today get a notification saying I can have one – hit the button on my feed and it told me to find out more (I think that button should take me straight to application rather than re-reading what I did yesterday but never mind - as noted above I had to go into the account section to action this rather than straight from the feed notification which felt very unintuitive - had I not known it was in the account section users might not find it)
  8. Got given the full £1000

All in all, not that bothered as I got what I wanted, but steps 3-8 during the course of 24 hours were pretty rubbish and very confusing! Hopefully this is constructive enough account though so Monzo could make changes.

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