Making Overdrafts Available

I don’t know where you got that figure from. Some banks may give £2000 equally some may give £10,000 but it depends on the customer’s personal financial situation rather than there being some magic figure banks will lend up to

Yes, it was more the point that £1000 is too small

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I doubt they will.
As it has to be repaid with 30 days notice any more than £1000 would leave most people in serious financial difficulty

Isn’t that fairly standard though? I know Barclays basically says it has to be repayed on demand, and there is no obligation for them to give any notice.

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Yes but I can’t see Monzo wanting to go down the route of chasing people for large amounts of money.
Especially not this early on in their existence.

Yeah, but that’s my point: that it is repayable at very short notice, doesn’t mean any bank routinely demands repayment with that short notice. The clause is there as insurance for the bank, if you wish. At least that’s how I understand it.

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Not disagreeing in relation to the other banks, although I know some who’ve been caught out with 30 day demands (mainly R.O.I banks though).
I can’t remember the wording of the overdraft information on the app but was along the lines of you shouldn’t be using the overdraft regularly and you shouldn’t be in a situation where you can’t pay it back in 30 days. I took it to mean they were very much discouraging any regular use of an overdraft if any other option (moving money from savings) was available

Again: not unusual. Barclays is the same. And yet they potentially offer 10s of 1000s in overdraft

(I actually remember when I applied for this overdraft a long time ago in branch, the advisor expressed that also orally, and their website and T&C also emphasise it quite strongly.)

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I don’t think they said a word to me, was 20 years ago on a student account.

Their website is good now but as they’re in trouble with the FCA about overdrafts that’s hardly a surprise.

Their emergency borrowing on top of the overdraft has always bothered me. If you’ve maxed the overdraft should they be giving more money? I know I didn’t ask for it, it just turned up one day

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I find it strange that when checking monzo I can get £100 overdraft while I opened a Tesco current account the other month and was given a £4K overdraft straight away I will add both accounts are not used really, wages go into my other account and do need an overdraft just find it strange how they come up with such different figures

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Monzo has said that they will be a bit more conservative with their risk profile initially. They have also set the maximum amount to £1K.

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The problem I’m having is that I get £250 interest-free and £250 normal overdraft (£500 in total) from First Direct. I have £100 from Monzo and I was one of the first ones to get an overdraft. I have asked several times Monzo to increase my overdraft facility but the only thing I get back is just a generic message, every time this message is the same, copy paste type message, really disappointed with this that you don’t get an actual personal reply to this.

I have not ever needed to use my overdraft with First Direct but it just makes me feel more comfortable just in case if something happens to my finances, which is really unlikely. If Monzo would offer me at least the same First Direct offers me, £500 overdraft, I would be more than happy with this, I do understand that it is still early days for Monzo offering their overdrafts.

I really want use full switch service from First Direct to Monzo and close my old account and go 100% Monzo. I just don’t feel comfortable living with only £100 overdraft as my backup. So till Monzo offers me a higher overdraft I will keep my First Direct open just for the overdraft for those rainy days.

Have other people had similar feelings towards their overdraft and the way Monzo is dealing with the situation?

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Something to bare in mind is that if you have an overdraft (or other credit) somewhere else this could be included as a factor against giving you any more

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yes, it is Catch 22, as you may not shut your old account and it’s overdraft until a new account gives you a similar overdraft, but they won’t give you that level until you have got rid of your old one.

I’m sorry that you feel our replies aren’t personal! There’s not much more we can say than the information we have given previously. We are unable to manually increase these limits. All of our limits are currently worked out according to various factors and within algorithms I know little about.

The machine it constantly iterating based on previous information so a cop is limited in what they can do.

Again, I’m really sorry about that. I’m not sure how we look at increases to existing shadow limits we have set for customers. So if and when this might change for you.

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I must say that when I questioned something about overdrafts it was the first time I felt I just got a generic, pasted response that didn’t entirely answer my question, so was clearly a script given to staff to cover as many bases as possible.

Eventually got my response, but it’s my first time feeling a little less than personal with Monzo… it could have just been a bot.

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Perhaps there could be an improvement whereby some of the reasons behind the rejection are provided to those who are rejected?

If I go into something like Clearscore it will instantly tell me the positive and negative factors influencing my credit score. Whilst I’m sure not all factors here could be detailed for legal reasons (e.g. if Monzo thought there could be a higher risk of fraud), other reasons like having too much existing credit or a limited credit history could be provided to inform the customer.

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Well my reason for questioning was that the reason given for being unable to offer an overdraft was that they couldn’t find my credit file.

Alarmed at this I just asked why that might be. Not questioning the outcome but rather just asking how it could be they couldn’t find it.

The response was one about there being many reasons why they might reject for overdrafts… when that wasn’t what I was asking.

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We’re still working out the kinks on the overdraft ineligibility and communicating how to pass this on to our customers. It’s ramping up lately, but it’s also definitely something we don’t all have the expertise to interpret the results :sweat_smile:

That’s fine, even if the response was “Actually we don’t know why we can’t find your credit file” would be better than what I got.

Though that being said I’d expect my bank to know a tiny bit about that!

As it happens I suspect I figured out the reason why myself - you use Call Credit and when I signed up to Noddle I saw the address was where I was living about 3 years ago, despite my accounts all listing my current address. Surprisingly Monzo don’t keep a record of previous addresses so there was no matching up.

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