I’m a newbie to the Monzo Community Forums but otherwise a customer for a few months
My question is around Package Bank Accounts.
I am currently with Halifax as my secondary bank (already replaced by Monzo, all DDs and SOs moved) - however, I do really like the rewards they offer with their Ultimate Rewards Account.
What matters to me is mainly:
Mobile Phone Insurance (I have a join account so it covers both me and my partner)
Worldwide Travel Insurance
AA Roadside Assistance including Home Breakdown Cover
Emergency Home Cover
There’s other benefits too but I don’t really use them. I get all of the above at a monthly cost of £17.
Now - I really do want to close my Halifax account (see more below) as I am not particularly fond of their service, old school practices, rubbish mobile app (in comparison with Monzo at least) and the issues I’ve had with them over the years and how they dealt with them.
My question to fellow community members - is it worth waiting for the ‘new’ Monzo Plus accounts re-launch? Do you have any other packaged bank account that can offer similar benefits at a reasonable price? I looked at Curve Metal but not yet convinced. I also tried to tot up individual insurance policies for all the above benefits and it works out a LOT more expensive compared to my current £17 a month. Especially Mobile Phone insurance policies are at least £8 a month themselves and that just covers my device (not my partner’s!)
So do I continue to stick with Halifax and just move the funds over to Monzo with a SO each month?
As an additional note:
Monzo (and other Challenger Banks) are the future. So damn convenient, easy to use app, great feature set, fully mobile based, great customer support, saving pots, IFTT integrations, instant transaction and DD notifications as well as in-depth spending analysis.
In stark comparison, I was on the phone for 46 minutes (during working hours) with a run of the mill high street bank (one of the big 4) just to make minor changes on my account. Completely archaic practices that are frustrating for the customers and a complete waste of time! I would never ever open another high street bank account and I am genuinely considering closing my existing accounts and moving my salary to
To be honest I’ve just accepted that at the moment I’ll have to keep my nationwide flexplus account and just use yolt or another aggregator for the analytics.
Theres no bank even close to nationwide at the moment for me. £13 a month, worldwide travel insurance including winter sport, phone insurance, and breakdown cover! Its such a good deal. I cant imagine a fintech competing in the near future as I imagine nationwide gets good rates on these products due to scale, and they have the money to use it as a loss leader and make it back in mortgages and savings. Cant imagine monzo or any other fintech doing that for a while.
In time I think Monzo will be able to offer the things you want, but I doubt it will happen with the first iteration of Plus (or the second? third??).
Many people on the forum are maintaining two bank accounts for this reason, keeping the benefits they enjoy (or features/usage that works for them) from legacy banks and hoping Monzo will catch up in the future. I’m confident they will but no idea of when.
Right now I have two banks monzo is my main bank I have all DD going out and my money payed in I keep my offer bank open for now ]. Monzo is working on Monzo Plus we get to hear what will be in this and how it will work but I am hoping he come up with some good new features the river offer banks that’s offer stuff like mobile phone insurance AA brake down ect.
I’ve had a look at the account page on the Halifax website, and there doesn’t seem to be a condition that salary is paid in, or a certain number of direct debits paid out. The account is like Nationwide’s £13 FlexPlus, although that doesn’t have Home Emergency Cover.
Stop thinking of the Halifax Ultimate Reward as a bank account and look at it as buying a package of cover as you would from any other provider.
Use Monzo as your main account, get your salary paid in and all your direct debits paid out, and simply send over a standing order for £17 every month to the Halifax account to by the insurance. Freeze the debit card, pop it in a drawer and forget about it. In other words, the reverse of your idea of sending money to Monzo, send it instead to Halifax.
You get the Halifax account £2 cheaper when certain conditions are met. Without checking, i believe it was £x amount paid in and a certain amount of Direct Debits out.
I do exactly this. I don’t use any aspect of my Nationwide FlexPlus account other than the insurance benefits. I see it as an insurance package with a monthly fee.
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Anarchist
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8
I’d say the answer here is ‘yes’
We are all in the dark as to Monzo Plus’ costs and benefits. Might as well wait and see.
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Anarchist
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9
Yes this s a better way if doing thing use monzo as main bank and use Halifax or nationwide for the offer thing like home emergency cover ect
You can just freeze the Halifax’s card and put it some where safe and just for get about it but if like a lot of offer and you have bad credit they account are not available to use what I would love to see is to be given a chase I know credit score is every think but things happen in life;
Thanks all for your replies. I am genuinely hoping that Monzo offers all (or at least some) of these benefits in the future. I cannot wait to leave the high street banks behind - suffered way too long with abysmal service, cumbersome processes and waiting times.
For now, it seems I will have to let my Halifax Ultimate Reward Account run its’ course
Not any longer, that ended a couple of months ago. Now you can get a £5 discount on the £17 monthly fee if you have £1,5000 salary paid in spend £1,000 on the debit card every month. I didn’t think it relevant to the OP as they stated they wanted to use Halifax less.
Halifax reward has some good feature but monzo may come out with some of its own during the this year we dine know yet but I for one would like to see this.
