Releasing Monzo's 2017 Annual Report

:tada:

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Just read the Annual Report 2017ā€¦ extremely good job at making it a simple read and well presentedā€¦ my possibly irrelevant comments

Share option scheme seems very fair, full vesting over 4 yearsā€¦ much better than my previous startup employee

Premises costs are high, but then again if you donā€™t have somewhere good to work you donā€™t attract the right people and keep them high spirited

The highest paid directors salary dropped YOY ā€¦ interesting :slight_smile: totally confused here as total directors is just slightly less than highest paid directorā€¦ clearly missing something

Good report - love the transparency of releasing the full financials without any requirement to do so.

If I was to highlight my main queries, Iā€™d be interested in knowing if there is a share option policy for staff and whether that can be released. The costs have grown significantly (as expected) this year and with the plan to staff up meaningfully in 2017/18 Iā€™d be keen to hear someone is keeping a close eye on this and the costs are well controlled. Needless to say there are quite a few examples of startups getting out of their depth with share options very quickly.

There is also a note about a Ā£22.5k loan to an employee. Not a significant number but seems like an oddity. Whatā€™s the story there?

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Fantastic report :slight_smile: Very well worded, well rounded and above all else - HONEST!! :smiley:

Super stoked to see the direction Monzo is heading, so happy to be a part of it all.

I assume there will be a report published each subsequent year? :slight_smile:

The update from Tom particularly about what is coming in the next year was good.

At first I thought that the date of appointment of the Auditors was wrong as this is Feb 2017 but this is not your first year of trading.

I then realised that youā€™ve changed Auditors.

Can you give us some background as to why this was please?

In terms of the Board, the names donā€™t provide much information but are duplicated on pages 4 and 6. A summary of each member with the skills they bring, attendance record and remuneration on a named basis would be good practice to report please.

Finally I agree that Monzo shouldnā€™t bear overseas ATM charges particularly of a few high users so some limitations would be welcome. E. g. . A certain number of free withdrawals a year or month after which charges apply.

Does direct membership of Mastercard help here?

Good to hear that youā€™re now a direct member of Faster Payments.

If this is a digital report and youā€™re not having the expense of printing it then donā€™t be afraid to use more images!

I was looking through the annual report and was wondering what it means when it says:
'Bankers

Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc
280 Bishopsgate
London
EC2M 4RBā€™

The bankers would be the bank that provides the bank account for Monzo Bank Limitedā€™s company accounts

I should have mentioned this sooner really but it was great to see @jzw95ā€™s awesome quote from the community included in this blog post & also, to see it being shared by influencers like Chanade on Twitter :clap:

https://twitter.com/chanademj/status/882488847053058049

The tweet includes a screenshot of the quote -

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Hereā€™s Business Insiderā€™s analysis of this news -

Quote: ā€œThe company says in its report that it loses Ā£50 per year per pre-paid customer and has just hit 240,000 active customers. If it had had 240,000 customers all year, that would have been Ā£12 million in losses.ā€

That should read " ā€œThe company says in its report that it loses Ā£50 per year per active pre-paid customerā€¦ā€

As I understand it (from elsewhere in this forum), ā€˜activeā€™ means customers who use Monzo at least once a week, which is about 60% of users (please correct me if Iā€™m wrong).

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Yes thatā€™s correct :slight_smile: those figures are from the investment deck from their last crowdfunding round.

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on a full year basis - Ā£12 million in losses - an ambition to have potentially Ā£40million in losses by end of year lol wow :slight_smile: wonder how many years Facebook ran on losses ?

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Well done on the annual report :clap:. Neatly presented and easy to read.

As @ninepine mentioned ā€“ Tomā€™s contribution gave a clear sense of where Monzoā€™s headed. Iā€™m excited. Canā€™t wait for the current account.

Interesting to read how the minority are the reason for the majority of ATM usage abroad. Like most things that are free or unlimited, thereā€™s always a few who find a way to use it for their advantage and see nothing wrong with what they are doing. Are these users using the card in the UK most of the time or just found a free way to convert sterling to foreign currency?

Since Monzoā€™s prepay card scheme is pretty much sold on the fact that you get great FX rates and zero fees from Monzo, you can hardly blame users for taking advantage of it. Monzo controls fair use by having limits.

Very interesting read! Being an accountant myself I must say the transparency is refreshing (along with the use of simple English as far as possible - as some areas are governed by law/standards).

Out of interest I have a question of directors pay. Your highest paid director earns a Ā£60k salary and your total directors salaries amount to Ā£65k (excluding share options) does that mean your other directors collectively only have a salary of Ā£5k with the majority of their remuneration in the form of share options? Or are they provided with salaries in other forms such as employee loans?

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I had a similar query, but then was wondering if thereā€™s a single director with pay and a second who is a board member simply contracted atĀ£5k/annum to provide some brand awareness / connections etc

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Simonā€™s just tweeted a link to this analysis of Monzoā€™s losses, which does a great job of putting them in perspective, considering what Monzoā€™s trying to achieve -

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/monzo-lost-67-million-why-should-terrify-traditional-banks-wootton

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Doesnā€™t make sense to me. Thatā€™s me, of course.

You are correct in that share options were used as remuneration for some of the directors. Some of the directors also joined later on the year so they had a minimal amount of cash compensation in 2016/17.

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