See your mortgage in Monzo 🏠 [Mortgage Referrals pilot live 🚀]

[RichardL (Rich)]

@Yulia

It would be cool if customers could customise the card and use a photo of their home, for example

You know where we live and Google has images of our homes…

[xnox]

@caribo

show the month in which the balance relates to … in this case it would be the Nov 2022 balance…

Ha, if only credit agency information was related to reality. Usually it is reporting month data, but it may be unrelated to as to which mortgage balance it relates to. I have seen credit agency data drift depending on what and when my mortgage provider decides to report what and to whom. Such that sometimes they all look the same and sometimes they look ahead or behind, despite all reported in the same reporting month. A bit bonkers! But what can one do.

[EdSB (Ed Stuart-Bourne)]

Thanks for raising - we’ve heard the issues with the remaining term calculation loud and clear. Let me explain how we calculate it and how we hope to improve it:

• When you opt in to this feature, the Credit Reference Agency (CRA) gives us data on the current balance, balance history and contractual monthly payment for your mortgage
• To calculate your remaining term, we basically use the NPER function in Excel (but don’t worry, our back-end is not relying on Excel!). This is a function that calculates the number of terms remaining assuming a constant periodic interest rate and payment
• That means we need to calculate your interest rate too. To do that, we look at how your balance changed last month (e.g. down £500) and your monthly payment (e.g. £800) to calculate the interest you paid for a given balance

So why does this go wrong? As you’ve already alluded to, if you’re making extra payments that aren’t factored into the contractual payment we see, we’ll wrongly calculate your interest rate, which throws off the term.

We’ve also seen that some banks send janky balance histories, applying the payment at very different times each month.

There’s no easy fix here, but we’re looking at a few options. Knowing about any extra payments you make (either by you telling us, or flagging the transactions from your Monzo account) could definitely help, but it won’t necessarily solve every case.

This is a priority for us to to think through over the next couple of weeks!

[caribo]

Since this launched I was prompted to check my TransUnion report and it shows each mortgage and the monthly balances going back years, and surprisingly it’s pretty accurate; which made me think it could be used to identify which monthly payments and provide the data needed for charting.

I guess your point is correct in that this depends very much on what information each organisation is providing and how timely their updates are, which is outside the control of the both TransUnion and Monzo.

[xnox]

It may also matter how the overpayment is setup and it’s size. I.e. with nationwide it may go into overpayment buffer or directly into reducing term. Which results in either out of whack mortgage balance, or out of whack interest charged / ever changing term. Under and over £500 overpayments with nationwide are a mess. And then get avalanche recalculation at trigger points in time (end of deal, change of payment date, etc).

[dinosm]

@EdSB

There’s no easy fix here, but we’re looking at a few options. Knowing about any extra payments you make (either by you telling us, or flagging the transactions from your Monzo account) could definitely help, but it won’t necessarily solve every case.

Thank you for explaining, it makes perfect sense.

Now, can I also point out that Monzo has had an issue from the start with my (Nationwide) mortgage payments, in that:

• I cannot set it as a recurring payment from the transaction details screen (the option is not there)
• It is therefore not predicted in Trends/Balance

It seems the mortgage payment is seen differently from other payments by Monzo.
In addition, I can only make overpayments to my mortgage account from my Nationwide account (I don’t think I can make them directly from Monzo), so hopefully Monzo could see that and understand it is an overpayment or I could mark it as such (but it would only work on Plus/Premium).

Not sure if the above is already known and/or if it helps with your plans for scanning for morgage payments & overpayments.

Thanks again for the continuous improvements

EDIT:

@michaelw90

Additionally, use that interest rate end date to remind me to look for a new mortgage deal.

Yes, this too! That would be great!
And additionally-additionally, there is another issue: a mortgage could have had various different interest rates throughout its lifetime, and of course changing regular payments (as well as varying overpayment amounts), not sure if Monzo’s calculations take that into account.

[Yulia (Yulia Storozhuk)]

@robsug

Would love to see options to pay extra etc in the future.

Please share your thoughts on how it could work to be most helpful for you

[robsug]

Well dream solution would be some form of Open Banking that lets you pay into the mortgage account easily, but I’m guessing this isn’t possible right now.
So perhaps a few more manual options instead? An option to specify interest rate, contacted payment and any overpayments (monthly or individual) would really help make the information more precise.
Perhaps “hidden” behind an advanced button so as to not overwhelm users?

[dinosm]

@robsug

So perhaps a few more manual options instead?

I had a pleasant surprise seeing that % bar under my mortgage, I didn’t think we’d paid off so much already.
I would maybe see a calculator of sorts going there, with scrolly bars to change the amount of overpayments and see instantly how the remaining term would change. Of course you’d need to enter your interest rate and time left on your current deal too.

[Peter_G]

@Yulia

Please share your thoughts on how it could work to be most helpful for you

This might not work in reality, but what would be super cool would be a button to hit that knows the sort code, account number and reference for the mortgage account and lets me make a one off or recurring overpayment. With some funky examples on how it might reduce term.

Similarly for connected credit cards (where this should be much easier)!

One thing that I think is missing (from connected accounts and mortgages) is somewhere we can enter the interest rate ourselves, and see the remaining promotional / fixed term period (e.g. my mortgage is fixed for a bit then goes to SVR, similarly one of my connected cards is 0% balance transfer for a fixed period - would be fab to be able to see both of those in Monzo and be alerted in very good time before they expire!)

[davidwalton (Award Winning Hot Coral Analyst)]

Manual accounts would get around this. For multiple examples.

Not automagic, no, but more flexible.

[davidwalton (Award Winning Hot Coral Analyst)]

@ndrw

Unless you choose to blur it

Cracking idea! Graphic for Mortgage card done!

EDIT: image changed to weekly home.

[caribo]

Maybe wishful thinking, but I would like Monzo to Identify possible mortgage repayments from my account feeds, let me select the relevant one and then use that to understand my repayment history. Hopefully this would yield enough data to understand if I am overpaying and to calculate the amount of interest I am paying and hence the interest rate…

[Toblerone (Toby)]

Would be great to see when fixed term ends and how the payments might change if you defaulted to the variable rate.

Natural extension then would presumably be a selection of offers for new fixed rates with existing/alternative provider.

Even ballpark figures here would be amazing.

[Peter_G]

@Toblerone

Natural extension then would presumably be a selection of offers for new fixed rates with existing/alternative provider.

Revenue potential for partnering with a comparison site or a mortgage broker!

[j06 (Jamie)]

@Peter_G

This might not work in reality, but what would be super cool would be a button to hit that knows the sort code, account number and reference for the mortgage account and lets me make a one off or recurring overpayment. With some funky examples on how it might reduce term.

You can’t make it too easy, or there will be people who decide to go all–in on overpayments (instead of savings) and who then hit the early redemption charge, which is very, very expensive.

[Peter_G]

Good call. Care - and lots of friction - needed.

[sonos (Piers Spencer)]

Hurrah, new features!

[EdSB (Ed Stuart-Bourne)]

@Peter_G

One thing that I think is missing (from connected accounts and mortgages) is somewhere we can enter the interest rate ourselves, and see the remaining promotional / fixed term period (e.g. my mortgage is fixed for a bit then goes to SVR, similarly one of my connected cards is 0% balance transfer for a fixed period - would be fab to be able to see both of those in Monzo and be alerted in very good time before they expire!)

@michaelw90

Let me optionally tell you my interest rate (when it ends), and let me tell you my monthly payment that I’m making. Let these work with the calculation to provide a better estimate.

Additionally, use that interest rate end date to remind me to look for a new mortgage deal.

Out of interest, would you know this (interest rate, and deal end date) off the top of your head? (Maybe to the nearest month?) If not, do you think you’d make the effort to go and find this information so you can tell Monzo about it?

[DaveJ (Dave)]

The information is in the Mortgage pack, literally open it find the relevant paragraphs, information obtained

Even less hassle now that most are emailed out and stored digitally