Monzo Premium: Collected Community Feedback 2023

Monzo Chat
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So there’s been a lot of chat recently about the features we get for Plus and Premium. And wanting a better offer even topped the UK section of the 2023 Big Poll.

There’s been a whole bunch of feedback since launch…

… but now over two years since launch (how did that happen?!) I thought it’s worth revisiting the question. What do we think needs a little TLC with Premium? :thinking:

Of course, there will be the inevitable poll, but I was chatting with @AlanDoe the other day who let slip that the team are keen to hear our views on Premium, so I thought I’d strike whilst the iron is hot!

Now, there might be tons of stuff that is unaffordable, but let’s use this topic for our imagination to run wild. Monzo can do the hard stuff about what’s viable and what’s not.

So let’s unpick:

  • What works well in Premium?
  • What doesn’t?
  • What needs tweaking?
  • What extra do we want for the money?

If it helps, think software features, think financial products (interest rates anyone), think about minor tweaks, and think out of the box!

And two different questions to provoke thought:

  • Leaving aside affordability (but being broadly reasonable!) what else would you want in Premium?
  • Is there a feature or a benefit that you would be happy to pay extra for?
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Reserved…

:bar_chart:

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Family cover for mobile devices - give me that and take my Money :eyes:
A better interest rate - 1.5% is poor

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Interest needs to increase, but otherwise I’m not really sure what they can add that isn’t going to cost them money or take away from the free account? More virtual cards?

Offers need to be substantially better. With 350k paying customers, this is very good leverage to get deals.

When anyone says they want pet insurance, bike insurance, a daily coffee from Starbucks or whatever other self-serving niche idea they have, these are going to eat in the profit and are so so unlikely.

edit

Thought of two;

100 categories
100 pots

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Nothing software related. Just provide better options/offers. Phone insurance that covers households. If money isn’t an issue then some kind of points/cashback system.

I wanted the metal card, but I will downgrade to Plus since I just want the extra accounts and custom categories.

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I’d like to see Monzo Points v2.

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Agree with all of the above.

Travel insurance and Lounge access is OK

Mobile device insurance needs to be household
Better interest rate
Credit Tracker needs shorter refresh timescale - once every 7 days?
Offers - the worst part - these need refreshing, say drop off the 3 or 4 least tapped on and replace with 3 or 4 different offers every 3 months

GREGGS POINTS!

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First and foremost, I want Premium to just work

And by that I mean, I want a way for features to work across my total set of Monzo accounts.

I feel I should be able to pay for Premium and reap the benefits across my joint or personal account - certainly the soft stuff.

By that I mean, virtual cards, categories, auto export, cashback, fee free stuff, interest - should be able to leverage the same benefit on my joint account (in some way). And I don’t think most of that should be a pay twice (either per user having personal and joint, or have both members subscribed). It should just be there.

That’s Gripe Zero for me. why can I categorise my amex transactions but not my joint ones, grr

Above and beyond, I would say stuff that enhances an experience, or is a perk, so that could be:

Financial Benefits, like:

  • Preferential Loan Rates
  • Preferential Flex Rates
  • Longer Flex periods
  • Access to a Monzo Credit Card :eyes:
  • Preferential Interest Rates
  • Preferential Cashback
  • Preferential Preferences

Extended Coverage or Access to Other Coverage: (and this is where it gets a bit Bundle-y)

  • Extend the phone insurance to cover family,
  • Things like bike, home contents, gadget etc insurance in app
  • Access to wills, life insurance, etc type products.
  • Investment products / platform integration
  • Joint partnerships with other “fintech” brands to have integrated services → a bug bear of mine is when all these fintech services which claim to be the future give me just a policy ref that I have to deal with countless customer service calls to actually claim anything on.
    → I realise many of these would not be wanted by all - so hence bundle-y

Perks:

  • Perhaps, limited edition cards with creative artwork on them (sort of what Cubbits do for glasses lense wipes but for cards (yes not very eco)
  • Tree planting - for every X spent or Y transaction, gimme a tree.
  • Carbon Offsetting of some kind
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[quote=“Peter_G, post:1, topic:143623”]
So let’s unpick:

  • What works well in Premium?

the metal card, the virtual cards

  • What doesn’t?

the interest rates

  • What needs tweaking?

travel insurance to cover per-existing health conditions

  • What extra do we want for the money?

better mobile insurance
link to Vanguard, etc

If it helps, think software features, think financial products (interest rates anyone), think about minor tweaks, and think out of the box!

And two different questions to provoke thought:

  • Leaving aside affordability (but being broadly reasonable!) what else would you want in Premium?
  • exclusive access to a VISA credit card with larger credit limits
  • access to Mortgages with better rates and larger credit limits
  • access to personal banker - a trained Financial Advisor on the end of Chat
  • larger cash withdrawals
  • multi-currency
  • car breakdown
  • Is there a feature or a benefit that you would be happy to pay extra for?
  • intelligent travel agent/service similar to Kuoni, but uses your data to advise on best places to visit and budgets, etc
  • intelligent concierge - someone/AI who/that can get you into queue jumps on waiting lists for restaurants, tickets to shows, a la Amex
  • access to hotel/booking.com/airbnb secret/exclusive sales
  • access to exclusive events (gigs, art exhibitions, comedy shows, etc)

:blush:

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Time to annoy @Revels with the self-serving ideas I have :laughing: Also, strap in folks because while thinking what would get me to use Premium, this inevitably turned into a ‘What my ideal Monzo looks like?’ post as I’d currently need more than just a paid offering to subscribe to Premium.

The Premium product would need to be substantially rebuilt for me to consider it. Essentially start by binning most things except the travel insurance.

What I don’t like

For Premium to be a consideration for me, first Monzo would need to change its approach on one thing: support. Reenable the chat button for everyone, then invest in better COp training to ensure first contact resolution of more issues. They should also simplify the Help page, replacing the weird mishmash of things from that page with a link to FAQs and a Chat button. They could also implement some form of chatbot/AI to act as a filter before one gets through to customers.

I had a great experience with Freetrade today. They have a chat button but I was greeted by an AI. But the AI actually listened to what I wanted, understood me, and told me what I needed to do. I wanted to change my linked account so it explained to me in human terms, asked some questions then submitted a ticket for me. Great experience, 10/10.

Although I don’t use support much at all, getting in touch when I need something is essential.

What needs to go

Other accounts, custom categories, virtual cards, credit tracker, advanced round ups, exports.

Move the lot into the free tier. I am not a fan of the freemium approach, where I have to pay for banking app features. Most of the market absorb such costs into the ongoing software development budget rather than charge extra. Sure, you could up the virtual card limit for paying customers but ultimately this should be available to all.

Personally, from what I have seen, it wouldn’t appear that there is a lot of ongoing development work on these things anyway. Most new things appear tangentially related to my bystander eyes, if at all. Time to improve the basic offering and charge money for other benefits.

Interest

At a time where the BOE will pay Monzo 3%+ for my deposits, it feels wrong to be asked to pay money to receive money. Roll out interest on the standard account in an effort to boost deposits and support lending. Greater Flex limits, loans, etc.

Mobile phone insurance

As a selfish iPhone user, I’d never pay for third-party phone insurance. Too many horror stories of botched repairs, late replacements, voided warranties. Plus phone insurance for the non-Apple folks can be found quite cheaply via other firms, tacked on to contents insurance for a fiver, or obtained via carrier. It adds no real value in my view.

What an ideal Premium would look like

For me, Premium should keep the extra cash limits, but should add support for Cheques too. I am old fashioned, yes. Travel insurance should stay, too. Not sure how it works at the moment, but in an ideal world it would work like with Amex where you’re automatically covered except for pre-existing conditions rather than having to worry about declaring stuff up front then being told you’re not eligible.

Lounge access should stay but ideally move to Priority Pass, and for £15 per person if at all possible.

I’d love to see some form of rewards offering - Monzo Rewards, Monzo Points V2 or whatever that may be. Give rewards on every purchase. But don’t become Yonder and allow redemptions only at poncy hipster London places but rather stuff everyone uses. Amazon, Argos, Sainsbury’s, B&Q, etc. Offer points that can then be turned into cash or redeemed as gift vouchers. Like RBS Rewards, or something. A more Membership Rewards-like experience would be the ultimate goal, but that’s not really likely.

Offers need reworking. I won’t expect Amex offers, but they should change dynamically, at least quarterly. Everyone’s seen and done the Patch offer (and it’s not even exclusive).

Oh, and Purchase Protection like Revolut or Amex charge cards, please.

I won’t ask for any of the other typical stuff like breakdown cover, cycle insurance or carbon offsetting. I may be too much of a boomer but they don’t mean much to me and can generally be found elsewhere.

In summary, I want an account that has the basics available for everyone (support, interest, full software features) but then a travel/lifestyle focussed Premium product with 0% fx (a given), travel insurance, rewards, and purchase protection. And I’d happily pay £20-25 a month for something that would essentially replace my Amex and all other cards.

Edit: oh, and a different card finish, please. Raw metal or whatever. Brass, copper? Something never done before. No need for contactless either, so go full metal. Thanks for listening to my TED Talk.

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I think this has to be the best post about Monzo I’ve read for a while.

It’s also summed up why I don’t currently do any banking with Monzo. That could change but at least a few things would have to from Monzo.

Key things keeping me away

  • Insurance is focused on single folks. As a family man it’s not really that useful

  • Interest is laughably low.

  • Paywalling of features at any level

  • inconsistent and poor support.

Some of the above should just be sorted for everyone. But for premium I’d really like to see uplifts in insurance cover and preferential rates.

For some other offerings I think premium is actually competitive (Lloyds etc) but others:

Barclays - No cost, I get a number of useable free trials (e.g. Apple Music), preferential savings rates and direct call support. It’s great.

HSBC - investigating but looks like I’ll move across if I can mainly because of the travel cover

I would say that the thing that’s best about the two above and really grates me about Monzo is the non paywalling of features. If they really want to get rid of the prepaid card image, that would be a good place to start.

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If this is addressed to me then I am flattered :grin:

It’s the first time in a long while that I took some time to put pen to paper (well, fingers to keyboard) and reflect on why I can’t get myself to even think about Monzo as a serious contender for my banking, despite the host of great stuff they came out with in the last year or so.

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Time to answer my own questions:

What works well in Premium?

I really enjoyed Premium to start with. I would never pay for a metal card, but when I felt it, it just seemed so nice. I really appreciated the software features, and moved from Nationwide Flex Plus for the mobile and travel insurance.

On the software, and surprisingly to me at the time, custom categories was an absolute game changer. Connected accounts were, as predicted, amazing. Virtual cards were nice, but not revolutionary. And free cash deposits comes in handy.

What doesn’t work well? What needs tweaking?

The thing is, most of the above is now table stakes. And the bits that were transformative now aren’t so much and need, in my view, a bit of an update.

Take custom categories. They’re important and useful. But they’re hobbled because they’re artificially limited to 50. And the UI is a bit under strain - you need to work through the cognitive load to pick either from the alphabetical list up top (custom categories) or the one down below (standard categories). Why aren’t they just alphabetical? And then the category creation screen is fancy but I’d much rather see all the available incomes on one screen rather than having to swipe.

The same with connected accounts. If I’m paying money for them, I really need them to be as native as possible. That means notes, #tags, adding to tabs, splitting the bill etc.

But both of these could/should arguably be on the free tier.

On to the Premium exclusive extras. The offer feels very ‘me too’. The insurance is okay, but hardly Monzo class, either in terms of provision or the online experience. For mobile insurance, Assurant is just okay. But the cover is basic and the excess is high. A maximum of two claims a year is low. I’ve made a couple of claims and it’s okay. But just okay. And the handoff from Monzo to Assurant is again just okay. There’s an online portal, but you have to tap on “Register your phone” from the Monzo app to get there. Instead it pushes you to the phone, which when you call says to use the website. Granted you can’t control the Assurant process, but what about a properly labelled one-tap-and-you’re-logged-in-experience?

And speaking of experience, I still think the Premium tab is horrible. It’s become a dumping ground for stuff, rather than finding its natural home. And things - like offers - go there to die. I’ve gone through the tab’s failings in detail here:

Finally, we need to talk about interest. If you’re going to offer interest, it really needs to track the base rate. It was initially competitive, but it really isn’t any more. In fact, for me it’s emotionally worse than not offering it, because it now feels a bit like Monzo is taking the Micky.

What is Premium For?

So here’s the million dollar (or £15/month) question: what’s Premium for? In an era of increased interest rates, it’s in Monzo’s interest to make the basic banking experience as good as possible, so that more folk use it as their primary bank account. That suggests, to me at least, that a lot of stuff in Plus should just be free. The only exception is connected accounts, where you don’t want someone basically using the Monzo app with your Lloyds account with no revenue going to Monzo. So a free offering where you can connect credit cards and savings accounts feels good. Or just bite the bullet and make all of Plus free. I think it’d work out.

My conclusion

Premium needs an overhaul. It’s just about okay, but the time will come soon when I can’t justify paying for what’s a mediocre product. The software features should all largely be free (because that will increase the bottom line). But there are some exciting and different things that Monzo could do with its flagship account. I’ll post about that separately…

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This is important. I have Premium, but it needs to operate on firm foundations. I want universal, excellent, support (so I don’t want to have to pay for what should be standard), but I want to get through to a human quickly. And someone who can resolve issues themselves. The delays (why is it always busy?) and the multiple-hand offs and intermittent failures to actually read what has been written need to be fixed.

It’s a shame, because when it works well it really works well. But it’s still just so inconsistent.

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Joint accounts. Premium. Plus. Parity.

FFS :monzo: how much will it take?

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Just to say I hope that someone from the premium/plus team (they exist, don’t they?) is reading this.

It feels, and I mean this with respect, that Monzo either thinks it’s good enough (personally I’m not so sure either of the paid options are, for me) or don’t think there’s a sufficient reason for change (which is also a totally valid option of course!)

In particular some additional premium benefits would be nice. Appreciating of course that it had to work for both parties of course.

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I got premium for the metal card to be honest, I like the phone insurance but realistically at this point I could downgrade to Plus, I use Apple Pay for 95% of transactions so don’t touch the card for weeks at a time.

For me I’d be interested in refreshed offers every 3 months, better interest rates and points/cash back would be amazing but not sure how realistic that is.

I saw someone mention a credit card, I would happily switch to a Monzo credit card instead of my Barclays credit card and if having Premium was the qualifier for access it’d be worth it.

Also, a crazy one that adds no value. But access to limited edition cards based on months subscribed, so maybe after one year you can select a different finish or maybe etched into the white layer is a pattern to show through to the metal, after 2 you get access to a couple of other options … after 5 some even cooler ones, you get my idea. Do any other banks do this, I’ve just thought of it but I like it, would make me keep paying to get cooler card designs.

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I don’t really care about metal cards, as I rarely use anything other than Google/Samsung Pay nowadays.
I am a Plus customer, and I wouldn’t consider Premium in its current form.

What works well in Premium:

I guess some of the insurances? Maybe.

What doesn’t? Tweaking and extras?

I have been spoiled by Nationwide FlexPlus. I wouldn’t consider Monzo Premium unless it had at the very least feature parity (and price parity) with that, there is really no point for anyone to spend more money to get something less.

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I think it’s very likely changes are coming to Plus and Premium.

Per this job posting: Job Application for Principal Product Manager, Subscriptions at Monzo

We currently have two subscription products. Monzo Plus, which is a freemium software product that helps customers manage their money better. And Monzo Premium, which is a packaged bank account that gives people peace of mind with phone and travel insurance in one place.

The number of subscribers has grown substantially over the last two years since launch, and we’re now looking to hire someone to accelerate them through the next phase of design and growth. As the PM responsible for this you’ll have full autonomy to redefine our existing value propositions and features, explore new subscription products, and build new levers to grow subscribers.

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