Shoutiness of loan notifications

Please turn down the volume! While some customers may be interested in a loan, others like me would never have signed up for it. I don’t mind that Monzo is offering loans, I do mind when you send push notifications to me every second day. I know you’re closing your financial year, I know it’s a good time to get loan customers, but I’m not one of them and will almost certainly never be one.

My preference for this kind of thing would be:

  • First time for a new offering a push notification is okay
  • Give me a way to tell you I’m not at all interested
  • If I interact and say Not interested, don’t push me this topic of notification again
  • If you want to remind me about this feature in future, do it when I’m exploring the app, not via push notifications and not in the core app flow for transactions I need to do quickly (e.g. topping up my balance at a checkout).

TL;DR - Gauge interest from push notifications and don’t retarget unnecessarily. Respect the user’s context when delivering advertisements.

Settings > notifications > lending promotions

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^ this

I have lending promotions turned on and I don’t recall receiving a single push notification for a loan :confused: Or any of their products / services for that matter.

And you’re getting them every other day?

Edit: I get the “your credit score has been updated go look at it” ones every month. But I’ve never had anything else.

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Have you reported this in app? If it is literally every other day then it sounds like there might be something wrong with how it is set up, rather than them generally trying to push for you to get a loan. I very very rarely get any push notifications, so it could be a coding issue/bug?!

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I never get offered a loan.

Perhaps they know I don’t borrow :man_shrugging:

Very clever algorithm if they do :joy:

Thanks for the responses.

Regarding managing notifications, it’s great that the option is there. An improvement would be something like “Don’t tell me about loans again” or “This isn’t relevant” which would then lead back into the notification setting state. This is best done in context, when the alert is viewed. I set my notifications when I install the app, I don’t go checking the settings every day to see if something has been added and activated without my knowledge.

Regarding frequency: I mean in 3 or 4 days I’ve been notified twice, which for something I didn’t sign up for and have zero interest in is once too many. Instagram, YouTube they all have ways of letting you tell the advertiser that this is not relevant to you.

This notification opt-out works on three levels:

1 - it lets customers who don’t care about loans opt out of notifications in a simple way
2 - it lets Monzo get a clearer picture of who is actually interested in loans, so they can evaluate conversion more accurately
3 - it allows Monzo to act ethically and not put unfair pressure on people to take up loans who perhaps shouldn’t

There is a little bit in the back of my head that wonders if the fact that I recently hit zero and made transfers twice into my Monzo account in the past days so I could make unplanned purchases (Christmas presents) is triggering these alerts in a targeted way. That would certainly be clever but a little predatory.

Regardless of why I got multiple push notifications in a short period, I find it quite unsavoury to think that people in more precarious financial situations are being asked multiple times to take out a loan, and this ultimately reduces my trust in the Monzo brand. (Trust being a really important commodity in banking.)

So that’s my feedback.

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Are Monzo more trustworthy than NatWest/RBS or Lloyds/Halifax or Barclays or Santander or any other bank?

:upside_down_face:

Monzo make poor decisions all the time, take the SCA implementation, or paywalling the credit report, or the recent kowtowing to the FCA over Binance.

Do I trust them more than any other bank? :thinking: not really, banks are always going to look after number 1 despite trying to be your friend.

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Not having trust in a bank because you have notifications on is one of the strangest things I’ve seen on this forum. And there’s a lot on that list!

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I would say it’s more the coincidence of having multiple loan offers as the customer was low on funds potentially suggesting that Monzo were trying to encourage loans as a solution.

Why does it worry you? People are more financially savvy than ever. Or was that a pop at the OP.

If you don’t trust a bank over a notification that’s worrying

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Losing trust over being potentially targeted from low balance with multiple loan notifications seems valid to me. That’s pretty predatory marketing if it was the case.

Seems to me what any bank would do though.

Is this ad hominem really needed? It’s certainly not welcome, nor dignified.

Is there any evidence to back this up :man_shrugging:

I don’t think anyone but Monzo staff could confirm this, and then they would be breaking a NDA

I would say it’s purely coincidence.

It obviously isn’t that.

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There is no way someone’s received lending notifications multiple times. No other user has ever reported this and regulatory wise nothing has been investigated that I am aware of.

If the OP had lending marketing turned on then what’s the big deal anyway :sweat_smile:

If I ran a bank I would say, people scraping low to zero regularly might potentially be perfect customers for loans. You don’t want the people who have significant balances.

Would I expect Monzo to do this no

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Because no other customer to your knowledge has made a post in this forum doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened to any of the millions of customers Monzo has.

We only have a slither of the total customer base posting in these forums.

To my knowledge the marketing on is by default, maybe on dismissing the first loan notification you could then be asked, don’t show these again which toggles it off.