Monzo as a going concern

They’re FSCS regulated, which means if Monzo went out of business, you’d get your money back (up to a limit of £85k) within a week.

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3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Monzo closed my account and will not give my money!

I wouldn’t worry, every bank is facing the same thing at the moment.

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Yes, there is no doubt that other banks are suffering too, a lot depends on the reserves a bank has and they all were shock tested also.

It’s always prudent to have a second account and a card.

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In July 2019 in one of the unofficial Slack channels, I predicted Apple would buy Monzo in March 2020

Damn that coronavirus

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Good bet. I do think Monzo & Apple have a lot of similar stances on things, and if Monzo get a US license, it could be a good way for Apple to get into banking easily.

But doubt it’ll happen.

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I don’t think Apple would want to be in banking, definitely not in the US. Credit cards are the default method for most things in the US

Now entering the UK market would be a different question

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Guess I best ditch my HSBC account soon as well then :man_shrugging::joy::rofl:

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Is anyone going to talk about the worrying position the COVID pandemic has put Monzo in? I mean we’re looking at a default rate of 14% here. That’s not good for any bank and especially bad for a challenger bank. I understand that deposits are protected up to £85,000 however it’s doesn’t bode well for Monzo’s longevity.

I mean, you could just look at any of the other topics covering this, where it’s been discussed to death?

Or start a new topic, whatever.

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If you’ve been reading the forum since, well, March, you would’ve seen that we’ve talked about it plenty.

You’d also see the default rate isn’t that bad when you compare it to, say, the billion-pound defaults and Natwest, Lloyds, etc are expecting.

It’s almost a storm in a teacup, when you look at it in context.

ETA: (drat, @tbutz beat me to making the point, because I just had to keep typing too many words :rofl:)

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:man_facepalming:

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been gazumped in a topic because I spent soooo much time going on and on. It’s a rare time indeed when I’m the succinct one!

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It didn’t, they’re on track to make a profit this year. I think Monzo is a better service but Starling are clearly better at making money.

I think there’s a bit of good fortune here for Starling - Starling’s annual report has a November year-end reporting date (so the last one was pre-COVID) and Monzo’s was right in the midst of the COVID uncertainty (February year-end).

The recent Starling trading update didn’t have much in the way of full IFRS measures and wasn’t audited (that I could see). It focussed on revenues, rather than profits and credit risk experience.

Having said that, it did look positive and they’ve got some upsides that Monzo don’t appear to (like a large bit of government backed lending from my initial read - could be wrong…).

Let’s come back to it once the Year-end November 2020 Starling annual report is out.

Fair to say that younger / smaller banks and other lenders will have a harder time of this than established big banks - in terms of how they weather the storm, not size of losses (obviously the bigger ones have recorded larger expected credit losses as they’re larger).

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Apart from the auditors report from page 36 to 43?

Edit: I don’t think comparing the quality of the financial reports is helpful. They are both regulated banks and financial reports will be completed in accordance with regulations (including being audited).

Sorry - I was not particularly clear… I was saying that Starling’s recent trading update didn’t appear to be audited:

To me, unassured trading updates which focus on revenues do not hold as much weight as audited financial statements which have to comply with the various laws, standards, and regulations.

Sorry if I am still missing the audit report in the recent trading update! It would be odd to have such an update audited and I didn’t see one when I read through it.

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I assumed you were talking about the financial statements released. As you state, trading updates aren’t regulated and don’t really hold any weight beyond marketing to investors.

I’m not quite sure why you’d compare Starling’s interim trading statement to Monzo’s financial statements when Starling has also released their financial statements for their accounting year.

There may well be some impact from Covid-19 on Monzo (though in the UK things were at early stages in February) and Starling has also discussed this in their financial statements. The true impact won’t be seen until both banks next annual financial statements, but Starling reports expecting to be breaking even by the end of the year despite Covid-19 so they can’t be expecting much of a lasting impact from this.

I agree with you entirely.

The reason I mentioned it is because the post which my post replied to was linking a review of the two banks’ experiences during the crisis, which referred to the Starling trading update.

I brought up Starling’s year-end date vs Monzo’s to draw attention to your point there - that you should compare apples with apples.

I thought I had explained that in my post above but clearly I failed to make clear in my ramblings - sorry, it’s a nice day and I was watching cricket :grimacing:

I should probably fess up that I am actually an auditor of large financial services companies, including those with material IFRS 9 expected credit loss provisions, so I do understand what I’m on about (to an extent), honest! Despite my lack of clarity and rambling posts!

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And what a good watch it was!!

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