Should we be worried by this? Monzo bank in money laundering rules investigation - BBC News
Itâs being covered
https://community.monzo.com/t/our-2021-annual-report/120801/180
and
https://community.monzo.com/t/monzo-in-the-media/51194/3216
and no, nothing to worry about. That article is 94.5% rubbish.
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You also havenât explained what youâre worried about? 
I thought that would be obvious but apparently not " Digital bank Monzo is being investigated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) over potential breaches of financial crime regulations, the bank has disclosed."
Thatâs not usually a headline that encourages great confidence in a bank.
âHundreds of customers of the online bank Monzo say they were left without access to money at the height of the Covid-19 lockdown after the company froze their accounts without warning.â
I donât really want my account shutdown for no reason anyway Monzo customer service has gone down hill ever since I joined. I will soon be moving away.
If you are looking for a bank that wonât close your account with no warning then you wonât find one
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No bank closes any account without reason.
You seem to have read things and already made up your mind anyway.
No itâs not obvious.
Theyâre being investigated, Iâd advise waiting for the conclusion before jumping to one yourself.
Not that any of this matters anyway if youâve already decided to move banks.
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Nothing to be worried about, the article is just running off the back of the Monzo annual report.
As for account closures, youâve nothing to worry about unless youâre up up dodgy stuff, of which Monzo canât discuss about in the 1st place as to why any account is closed.
Itâs a combination of reasons when I first joined Monzo you could always have a chat with their staff via the online chat via the app. Now the online chat is hidden away and its hard to speak to a rep. Obviosuly you canât phone anyone. I donât think a my local bank being investigated by the FCA inspires great confience either. Reading that they make a ÂŁ130 million loss isnât great either. Monzoâs main competitor Starling is already profitable.
Ref:
Chat is easy to access.
You can phone them and itâs also been confirmed that they donât cut off the call after 20 mins, so we should stop seeing people popping by saying they tried 12 times to get through etc etc
People who have issues tend to shout the loudest on those kind of sites, I tend to keep a wide berth from those in the 1st place.
Yeah they made a loss, itâs not the end of the world. The Bank is still running and even if it did collapse your money is safe up to ÂŁ85,000.
Itâs easy for people to read a report or a news article and just take all the negatives from it.
They made a loss big deal, next year will be different.
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What are you trying to prove now? If you prefer Starling then join them? They close accounts too.
Make sure you avoid that new bank Natwest, they are also being investigated.
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NatWest have been charged with actual breaches. How come that isnât the story people are salivating over?
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I donât think this is necessarily true. Iâve encountered a similar situation and it wasnât as bad as Monzoâs standard practice.
HSBC called me once to ask for an explanation for a few transactions that raised some flags - I explained what it was and the issue was resolved.
Starling Bank froze my accounts once also due to the same transactions, they messaged me asking again for an explanation and the account was unfrozen 30 minutes later.
Sometimes just asking a few questions provides a better picture than someone looking with suspicion and not probing further.
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The opposite is true - itâs been proved numerous times that they cut people off. I donât think this has really been disputed⊠I tried it myself once to check.
Anyway my comments arenât really there to slate Monzo, itâs just that thereâs obviously room Fitch needed improvement here.
It has been shown in the past, but as of a day ago:
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It was confirmed 2 days ago, itâs recent so unless youâve tried in the last few days. Iâm not on about the old days gone by
They also do that
They donât just freeze and then close automatically in all cases
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That is also what Monzo do.
Do you actually have any experience yourself with Monzo freezing your account?
Sidebar, freezing and shutting down accounts is not the same process. When Monzo makes the decision they want to shut down an account, thatâs what they do. If they find a suspicious transaction, they freeze money. I think youâre getting the two mixed up.
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Itâs subjective isnât it? to say it is âeasyâ that has not been my expereince I am happy you have had an easy expereince though. Just looking in the app when you load the app it is not obvious where the chat option is. After a bit of trial and error it seems to be under âContacting Supportâ and yes I see phone numbers there too. If you type âchatâ in the who can we help though that doesnât bring up âContacting Supportâ so perhaps they need to index that as a key word fairly obvious! Looks like you have to type the word âSupportâ not âChatâ to get to chatâŠmakes so much sense 
Iâm with you in this one. I believe they deliberately made the chat function harder to find to save themselves some money. Itâs the reason I stopped using it as the main account - I just thought it was a very customer unfriendly move.
Still, that was ages ago and nothing to do with the FCA or account closures. I wouldnât worry about either of those tbh, unless you are trading crypto or something
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