Starling Feedback

Will be interesting to count the CASS numbers for Monzo. I wonder how many are planning to switch, rather than have Monzo as a side account (keeping legacy for cash deposits, SEPA/IBAN etc.). I wonder how many full switches it would take before the legacy banks really start either investing heavily or making more sensible offers for the challengers. I’m guessing if a single bank lost half a million, it might start to happen. I wonder how long that would take. I’m guessing Monzo don’t currently know which banks we’ve come from, but presumably CASS will tell them.

As for competition between the challengers, I expect a fight to the death in the early 2020s…especially between Monzo and Starling. Atom will probably survive as a savings product. Tandem may survive as a credit card if they hire a CS team, and then there’s the small issue of Revolut…always a hard one to call.

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Yeah, there’s collated reports of all inbound and outbound CASS switches on a regular basis, and obviously it’s all part of the meta-data for each individual switch as well…

I actually anticipate us having to do a fair bit of awareness around it… I would venture to say that the majority of people don’t know what CASS is.

Or understand that you have to open a new account first before you do it. Or that there is such a thing as a partial switch etc. Lots of stuff to enlighten us on :sunny:

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I’d never trust any bank, including :monzo: Monzo, sorrynotsorry, to do a partial switch. As far as I’m aware the same guarantees aren’t in place, and there isn’t really any incentive for the bank clerk, who has no idea of immediate cash flow and bills, to get it right.

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That assumes that switching is a manual process, but for Starling at least, it’s not - they have fully automated the process.
I’m assuming here that Monzo will do the same.

That makes sense with Starling as onece the process has been activated there is no going back whatsoever

The process as far as I know is bought in by the participating banks.

*You have the choice not to close the leaving account but then you cannot use the CASS and will not benefit from the guarantees. Once the switch gets to 6 working days to the agreed date it is not reversible as I found out with HSBC.

*Thanks to j06 for pointing this out.

I have also found out with NatWest
But on a positive note the switch seems to be going exceptionally well

A partial switch, automated or not, is not subject to the Current Account Switch Service Guarantee. This means:

a) There is no time limit of seven days. Theoretically a partial switch could take over a month, crashing my mortgage payment direct debit. Nothing would technically have gone wrong from the bank’s point of view because there is no target of a week.

b) If anything were to go drastically wrong, and I find myself either out of pocket through non-payment charges, or my credit file is marked, the bank is under no obligation to make things right again.

Not going to let anyone meddle about where my mortgage is concerned.

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One place where Mr Lewis might actually be able to help you :wink:

Strange to see that switching of current accounts is 8% down on 2016. I’d have thought it would be steadily climbing. Maybe it is that most switching is confined to the early adopters and a few disaffected legacy customers and that forum chat inflates the reality.

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There’s a lot of inertia against switching… and incumbent companies make sure the perception is that it’s much harder than it is. Most people wouldn’t even consider it.

The whole wording of ‘switch’ is loaded to imply that by opening a new bank account you lose the old one. And that’s a jump into the unknown for many.

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I can only speak from my own experience with family members
They are still terrified of switching
The perception is that it is all far to complicated and frought with wrong doings

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I imagine a lot of people have done what I’ve done. I’ve opened two new current accounts in the last year, Starling and converting Monzo from prepaid.

As I’m currently living with my parents I have under 5 DDs, so although I use Monzo as my main account, and barely touch Starling or HSBC, I manually ‘switched’. Still keeping HSBC open, as for some reason having held one of your accounts for several years seems to be a plus on ClearScore. Last transaction was 4 months ago though :innocent:

If a lot of people change primary account, but don’t use CASS or ‘switch’ as such, this would probably distort that statistic.

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I’m sure that’s a very real fear for many.

According to this article, Starling have 100,000 customers :smiley:

http://www.mortgagesolutions.co.uk/news/2018/02/13/digital-adviser-habito-partners-starling-bank-give-customers-app-broker/

Looking forward to seeing how well managing a mortgage will work within the app.

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Nice catch! They appear to have declined to share the number of users that they have with City AM & TechCrunch today so I’m not sure I trust that story but I’ve forwarded it on..

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100k customers is quite a tiny amount considering :eyes:

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Well, depends how you look at it. Starling launched March last year, Monzo in late 2015.
I remember reading somewhere that Monzo had 100k customers in the beginning of 2017.

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When I went to a meeting at one fintech their data on competitors showed a figure of approx 150,000 for Starling!

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