Hard agree.
I think I’d be happy to pay a monthly fee if the government legislated on this: so - no more predatory overdrafts, adding in mandatory gambling blocks etc, but you can charge a max of £3 per month for a standard bank account (except for the most vulnerable customers). Then I’d say, yes, that’s a price worth paying.
But who’s going to be the government that forces us to pay for something that’s free?
Apologies 
Reached out to Matt - he said he’s going to come by tomorrow and passes on his apologies for not being able to jump in as yet!
Having a logo isn’t a guarantee of anything. It’s a guarantee that on the day of inspection, the company passed all that was required to gain such logo.
I’ve worked in two industry’s where national inspections are mandatory, with government inspectors pour over document over document. Visit places and interview staff and clients and then giving important, possible career ending verdicts. Even then, I know inspection day can be a lot different to what actually happens day-to-day on the other 364 days.
Having a strong ethics policy and showing Monzo are applying it is more important in my opinion. If Monzo want to go for it, by all means bravo. I like actions, especially after I have criticised Monzo in the past for not supporting poorer members of society better (e.g. with deposit fee when I live in one of the poorest areas of the UK where 50p is a lot of money, or the old interest fees when introduced, which Monzo had to change finally when FCA said it wasn’t fair) etc.
Things like changing your corporate governance structure to take account of people impacted by your business - that’s something that you can’t just switch on for the day of certification and then switch off the following day.
It’s fine for us to be able to see interest rates or deposit fees. But as customers, we have no way of knowing whether Monzo really is paying a living wage like they say they are, or whether their investments really do avoid fossil fuels. Again, these aren’t things you can switch on for the day the inspectors arrive.
I like that you’re so trustworthy of businesses, but I’d rather have external monitoring to make sure they’re doing what they promise to do. Otherwise we’re back in the realm of Shell and BP paying more for TV ads to show how green they are than for the actual green projects they work on.
I think because most people don’t care. They can shout about it, but it’s better to shout about things that get actual engagement and most customers.
If you’re super passionate about it, you’ll find it yourself.
Most of the info is linked under “our social programme” on the links at the bottom of the homepage 
There’s actually a fair bit of research to show that a large enough number of people care a lot.
Take this, for example. It’s from 2019 and it’s US based (Americans donate more to charity than Brits, so this kind of research doesn’t translate to the UK exactly). It shows how an overwhelming majority of millennials (ie anyone under 40) - 81% - want a company to donate to charity and make a statement about global citizenship.
All very fluffy and people are obviously going to tick yes in a survey, so that probably doesn’t really reflect buying choices, does it?
Ok then have a look at these stats:
59% of people bought goods or services from a company they considered socially responsible, and 32% of Americans plan to spend even more this year with companies that align with their social values. What’s equally important to note is that in the same timeframe, 32% of Americans refused to support a company that they felt was not socially responsible.
Again, intent might not equal action. But these consumers are AWARE of the ethics of the companies they shop at. Those 59% know that they supported socially responsible businesses.
Very few of us will make every buying choice an ethical one. But does it make me feel good to shop at John Lewis, where I know they treat staff as (relative) equals? Or Monzo. Or Bulb. Yes of course.
Do I also shop at Amazon and have a Vodafone sim. Also yes.
Same. It’s great that Monzo has a social programme. But I’m not sure I even know what that means.
If there was something saying: banks can do better for society, the environment and customers - I might click on it and know what I’m about to read.
Shout, friends, shout.
I think that’s right, although it can be a little hard to play on, ethics is still a reason I bank with Monzo.
They didn’t crash the world economy, or rig the libor rates, engage in illegal dark pool activities (aka fraud), hide billions of pounds of illegally laundered Russian or Iranian money from regulators, or basically any of the other things that large banks seem to make their bread and butter.
Still, also, I’m dubious about whether the public really care or even understand most of this.
The problem is that, sometimes, when we shout about things we get accused of virtue signalling - including by people on here. I know you’ve acknowledged that in your post - but how do you define virtue signalling?
I’ve always defended pretty much everything we talk about publicly - like the way we deal with vulnerable customers, the gambling block, customers in financial difficulty and sometimes I’ve been accused of virtue signalling. But I see what we do, day in and day out and I don’t think we’ve ever been guilty of it. Sometimes we’re maybe not very good about shouting about our actual actions, rather than our intent but often that’s because behind the stories we’d love to share there are real people who we want to protect.
I think in this case we’re starting small and talking about what we do, every day to be as responsible as we can be. To people, to the planet and our future.
Publicity is good, but the actions are more important.
We’ve done some brilliant stuff that hasn’t been talked about yet, and I know there’s a plan to update people outside of Monzo about some of that.
A pejorative term used in bad faith by people who would absolutely lose their shit if you turned it around on them and called their wearing of poppies in November ‘virtue signalling’.
And a lot of the times, people who use the term are showing themselves up, because by saying “I don’t believe you genuinely care about this thing you profess to care about”, what they actually mean is “I just pretend to care about these things, so I think everyone is doing the same and cannot comprehend that anyone could genuinely care.”
tl;dr, when people use the term ‘virtue signalling’, it says more about them than whatever they’re criticising.
Hi @urban 
I’m Matt, head of public policy & ESG at Monzo. Amongst other things I lead the work on our climate programme 
I saw your post and thought it would be helpful to jump in and share some info to answer your questions, although people have helpfully picked up on much of it below.
You can find information about our ethics on our social programme web pages, which are here
You’ll see here our investment policy - while most of our deposits are held at central banks, we’ve made a commitment not to invest in fossil-fuel based energy companies, arms companies or tobacco companies.
When it comes to net zero we’re doing lots of work that i’m really excited about! You can find details on our climate programme here. As others have said, we’ve set ourselves a net zero emissions goal of 2030, but if we can get their sooner we will, and we’re absolutely going to try.
We’re working with a really great company called Watershed to help us measure and understand our carbon footprint - you can see our 2020 footprint on the web page and right now we’re in the process of measuring our footprint for 2021 (we do it by calendar year). The thing that’s most important to us is to measure as extensively as possible, and to disclose every part of our footprint - we want to set a standard for transparency. You’ll see we measure our full scope 3 emissions, including things like payment processing, professional and legal services, and cloud computing.
We’re not a member of the net zero banking alliance, but we are a member of the Tech Zero Taskforce, which is frankly a better fit for us as a smaller tech based firm. Other members include Starling, Revolut and Wise.
We’ll also have more to share really soon on our climate work, we’ve been working on emissions reduction measures and will have some news on carbon removals too 
@MattFisher so sorry for the late reply, but thanks SO much for all this detail. This is really great to hear, and makes me proud to support Monzo.
Totally agreed with all of @N26throwaway’s questions.
Thought I’d share this regarding our mission to bring carbon transparency to banking.
Love it! Thanks for sharing @AlanDoe. I’ll admit I didn’t understand all of it, but Monzo’s commitment to going way beyond the superficial is admirable. Even if I don’t understand the whole thing, this kind of detail reassures me that it’s not greenwashing. 
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