I thought I would drop this here as it would help to get some context. I recently (excitedly) signed up for the Monzo current account. However of late I have been asked a couple of questions via Monzo support which has deflated my excitement. The questions have lead to follow up questions, which in my opinion are quite intrusive as in my 20years with other banks I have never been asked unless when applying for credit, changing jobs, getting a mortgage or signing a tenancy agreement. Also when I pushed back on why the questions were being asked I have gotten different answers which to me implies its not all very transparent (contrary to what Monzo is supposed to be about).
What is it you do for a living
What are the payments that you have received
What is it that your business does and do you have a website we can check out
Regarding your salary payment can you provide us with a payslip for that payment
Am I going overboard, just for extra context with out giving out too much information. I have transfered say about 3k to Monzo in a couple of days. All transfers have come from personal accounts with other banks, with one being a salary payment from my own business.
Has anyone else had the pleasure of this experience, as one of the reasons I was given was that this is a standard post signup procedure.
You will also get that at other banks (and indeed building societies) as part of anti money laundering regulations. A friend received a similar sum from his firm as a share save payout and his account cashiers demanded a letter proving what the money for, up to date photo ID, and a payslip
From experience elsewhere there is not neccessarily just a set monetary limit, but a mixture of factors which vary from one financial institution to another
I expect there’s a number of factors that Monzo considers. For example, the average user might not be trusting enough to deposit £3k with a tech company / brand new bank as soon as they open their account!
At the end of the day though, they are a regulated bank, that’s responsible for protecting some of users most personal data so you shouldn’t feel uncomfortable providing this information, they can be trusted
I would counter that most people who use Monzo current accounts will be aware that its covered for 85k via fscs hence its trusting the UK govt not actually trusting Monzo (any bank can fail)
Its odd as every transaction bar 1 has been from or to an account in my name. In fact if they asked for the rationale for the transaction I would have offered a thorough explanation.
On a different note, I was not comfortable at all giving a pay slip via chat. I dont think AML / KYC checks should be done via chat. A quick 5min phone call would have zeroed down to what the issue was instead of round robin questions.
I think my problem with it is that it really is not my bank’s business how I make my money. I’m much more of a libertarian when it comes to this. If the government thinks I am doing something dodgy then fair enough they can investigate, but I really object to an urk at my bank delving into my personal details - it feels like an intrusion.
I do think that the security theatre around terrorism has given the government carte blanche to be busybodies by proxy.
They need to know you’re not getting your money by illicit means. That’s their responsibility. It might be the government who want to know but it’s the bank who have to check.
Of course, and yes I can trace all of my funds back to legitimate origins, but I remember the days when your bank simply looked after your money, rather than snooped into every aspect of it.
We all give up so many freedoms for the one in a million chance that something is dodgy. It is 1984 by the back door.
I’m not sure it’s reasonable to compare either of those companies to a bank unfortunately for their users, there’s a very different level of data protection & compliance expected of Monzo by the FCA.
Multiple large payments from different banks - I would be surprised if it didn’t raise a few red flags, and I’m glad Monzo follow up on these kinds of things. They don’t want to become liable for fraud.
I remember getting the third degree when I paid the deposit for my house from my legacy bank, for similar reasons. It’s not personal, it’s what they have to do.
I may not agree with you on everything but you made some very valid points here. I have been thinking about the same hack and another one which happened a few months ago at UniCredit UniCredit
We are handing over more and more personal data to our banks. I believe Monzo will be very reliant on personal data to built a user profile for offer better services in my opinion but that means there will always be a risk to our privacy which we should all worry about and it’s always good to question how the data is being protated and used.
User data is very valuable and I can see Monzo are clearly going to use this, for example, to offer energy providers, which is fine because Monzo appear to be much more transparent than most but we should accept not everyone would want to sacrifice privacy for comfort.
Here is FT link to calculate your personal data worth
unfortunately for their users, there’s a very different level of data protection & compliance expected of Monzo by the FCA.