I should probably start this off by saying I’m a full time Student at University and I get money every month from my parents who live overseas via bank transfer to one of my other UK bank accounts and then transfer it to my Monzo account.
Every once in a while I’ll receive scholarship money from University but outside of that I have no regular source of income. Traditional legacy banks straight up refuse to give me an overdraft or credit card because I don’t meet their income requirements which are typically 8-9K of income per year.
And yet I almost got an overdraft with Monzo because of Monzo looking at one scholarship payment of £667 despite the fact that I only get that two or three times per year. For reference, the usual bank transfers every month and even a part time job I had for a few months didn’t satisfy the eligibility check for an overdraft in Monzo.
Thankfully I was denied for another reason, being deemed too risky due to my poor credit score.
I’d like to suggest that Monzo improve the robustness of their income checks on Overdraft and Loan eligibility cos I can imagine others in a similar situation to me using Monzo could be offered an overdraft or a loan that a traditional bank would never offer them due to the risk associated with that.
A way of improving the robustness could be to not focus on a one off “large” transfer but to look for a history of similar transfers and check to see if they receive it on a regular basis (e.g. once a month, once a week).
I think it always shows “find out about an overdraft” regardless, I would suggest that it has another screen regarding apply for overdraft etc, but for me it still shows even though I was declined as money goes straight to my JA, now it’s not clickable for me anymore
Surely you get offered an overdraft or you don’t? There’s no guarantee you would have got an overdraft with a higher credit score and low income. Banks don’t detail the exact reasons why you are turned down normally, unless I’m missing something here?
Nope - Instantly offered £1,000 overdraft without having to do anything.
This.
Unless @AluminiumTech has some inside knowledge of how Monzo was looking at his credit file, I fail to see how they’d know why they weren’t offered an overdraft, or even the concern over the eligibility check?
Initially I wasn’t offered one. Upon that £667 coming into my account I was shown the option for applying but then upon trying to apply it turned me down cos of the low credit score.
It appears to do the financial check before doing the credit check so ultimately if the credit check hadn’t failed I would have gotten an overdraft without any real source of income.
I’d guess this is the case because you could have an income going into a different bank account.
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tbutz
(🏳️🌈 Producer of "low value commentary")
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If Monzo were to just do a credit check on you (which would be a hard check on your credit file) without your permission, I can imagine they would be in trouble. So they can’t win.
Ahh mate, don’t discuss this with everyone, it’s your personal info. Take a look at your credit file with experian, equifax and totallycredit, they should be able to tell you everything.
