Q1 2021 CASS Stats

Very surprised at the Monzo vs Starling gains and losses. Even more surprised at the amount of switching losses at Monzo given it’s size compared to the big players. Looking at Lloyd’s for example who have by far many millions more customers at that brand and Monzo is only a bit under half of their switching loss volume.

Weren’t Lloyds one of the first to start throwing money to switchers again, and the Virgin/Clydesdale helped by the 12 bottles of wine they were giving away pre Christmas?

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Yes. Expect HSBC to rank highly in the next period for the same reasons.

Shame the banks don’t have to provide evidence the account is actually used for salary and debit card transactions after the switch. At the moment, the basic numbers are a very crude method of rating success.

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I feel a little bit sorry for the 62 who joined Tesco Bank - just before Tesco announced they’re not going to accept any new accounts anymore so it’s looking like they wont be getting much long term support from Tesco. It’s a shame the Supermarkets never managed to get their bank service off the ground - they could have bought some interesting innovation to the sector. Things like having Branches attached to their larger supermarkets, with opening hours more in line with supermarket times (7 days of week opening - like Metro are doing now). Or doing some of your banking at the till (like paying in cash or cheques or withdrawing from your account).

Did Starling make a requirement of the Business Loan thing that you had to have your Starling Business Account as your main Business Account, or just have an account. Just trying to work out if the big gain is from people who ‘chose’ Starling specifically, or who signed up just to apply for the loan. I would’ve thought, unless they specifically said you had to have the Starling account as your main Business Account, people just getting the loan would’ve set it up as a second account and kept their main one so everyone switching with CASS have been people who have chosen Starling for other reasons as well? Although I’ve no idea how complicated running a Business Account is and if you’re allowed to have 2 different ones or not?

It’s also interesting comparing individual Banks with the ‘Banking Group’ they’re in (mainly Lloyds Banking Group and RBS Group). The 30k gain for Lloyds more than covers the 12k loss from Halifax in that group to give them a total of 18,952 (Lloyds + BoS - Halifax) and RBS Group total is 10,333 (RBS + Natwest + Ulster).

I’ve only seen ad campaigns recently for Lloyds, Halifax (I think - although it maybe Nationwide?), Santander, Natwest and Starling. Someone at Santander must be worried…

Also, good to see Triodos are still growing - despite very little publicity and only people specifically looking for a ‘gold standard’ ethical and environmental banking would go looking for them.

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I did expect that Monzo doing better, but…
“Organic” marketing also very important, but this time it’s going against Monzo :confused:

A short reflection from Fb as question was:
Heya I’ve got a buissness bank with monzo, after seeing everyone’s posts about there bank getting shut down, I’ve went back to my old starling bank account. Just wondering if anyone else’s monzo bank is okay?
Has anyone had problems with starling?

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Sorry, I really can’t see the relevance of the FB screengrab. Seems very off topic for this thread

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I can :smirk:

Monzo lost 4k and gained only 10k. That’s strongly effected by “what people talk/advice” online.
A few people reflected they moved their money away from Monzo “just in case” :thinking:

Also, saw many notes that people where closings their Monzo accounts “before Monzo did it” :speak_no_evil:

All that does not help Monzo gain as many new customers as they could :neutral_face:

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God. Imagine taking financial advice from someone who can’t even spell business.

If this conversation is from the “Monzo stole my money” group, I doubt you could get a worse self-selecting group to prove a connection between social network interaction and CASSing.

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Well, I think that group is very “effective” as it’s growing quickly and (probably) many people believe to all stories they read there :roll_eyes:

Eg if I never had Monzo ans MANY of my friends says “not worth the hassle” I probably wouldn’t bother to try that service tbh :thinking:

@anon75400416 that’s what also affecting CASS figures, as less people joining and more leaving :pensive:

You’ve brought this up a few times. What’s your angle?

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Their well trumpeted move into self-service estate agency totally fizzled out as well. No-one would have minded some “disruption” there

The supermarkets are extremely good at what they do as their core business, but maybe they are just as shaky outside of that as most other businesses

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Considering the spend from Starling and Lloyds on adverts and marketing, no surprise in the uptick in numbers. Maybe monzo need to thinking about national TV campaigns once they’ve fine tuned and introduced new revenue generating features such as premium accounts, loans, ISA accounts etc.

Also, as most posts suggest the incentives offered by other banks can be appealing for non sticky customers to move across.

Again also mentioned by other users, the offer of bounce back loans would also play a part in these numbers.

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Sorry if I’ve missed something but What do bounce back loans have to with personal current account switching.

Whilst I agree that banks offering switching incentives probably fair better in these things Clydesdale and Starling didn’t offer them.

The fact that Monzo gained 10,000 is not an insignificant number but overall I doubt (and I’m sure people will disagree) that those 70,000 people switching to the top 4 (on the CASS stats) did so to paid for accounts. Equally (and I know we’ll never know) i’d be curious as to how many of those 10,000 that switched to Monzo did. so to plus or premium accounts

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Clydesdale numbers include Virgin Money and the wine deal

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I thought someone had said here that Clydesdale stats don’t include Virgin Money. Even if they do though, I doubt the CASS swing was that big over a few bottles of wine (happy to be wrong though)

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Have contributed to these stats in a few ways

TSB switch away

Halifax switch in & away

RBS switch in (best of the high St bunch for me, so have kept this - also had to keep it longer in their terms)

Think Money opened just to switch away (on the lower volume section)

Lloyds switch in & away

Monzo switch in closing off the 4th account in the loop

Part of me wishes I’d kept the Lloyds account - bizarrely the app worked slightly smoother than Halifax and also…the Halifax card. I do still have a Lloyd’s saver for cheque imaging, but RBS should replace this soon…

Monzo sat there as the third sacrificial account now, but won’t do a switch boon currently as in the middle of something.

I’ve also found I can make more money from Revolut referrals of late

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“Virgin Money and Clydesdale Bank merged in 2020, a change that will be reflected
in the participant data released in the July 2021 CASS dashboard” - for the avoidance of doubt, it clarifies this in the document.

The stats include small business switches too, so there are still potentially people/businesses who switched for bounce-back loan applications. Whilst the small business switches only really account for ~10% of the CASS’s every month (December’s was slightly higher), which means we’re only talking about 15K here, it’d be interesting to see which banks reopened their BBL applications (or closed them).

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Good spot!

I did wonder, though, if there’s a bit of a grey area in the middle. I thought that the first “Virgin” current accounts were actually opened under the Clydesdale banking licence, but using the Virgin brand. It’s certainly using the Clydesdale technology.

Messy, isn’t it?!

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Someone could have opened a Starling business account to get the bounce back loan and then being impressed by their app/Starling as a whole, decided to switch across a personal account.

The same can be applied to any other feature or benefit.

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Sorry but going into the Facebook echo chamber of people who have beef with Monzo isn’t reliable one bit.

That’s like me going into a Conservative party election rally and saying so who’s voting for Labour then. The results that come back aren’t worthwhile to use for any analysis.

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