The Monzo Weekly Diary 2.0

Let’s get this weekly diary going again, what do you all think? :wink:

@Oliver kicked off the new year with a post in the old thread, which I’ve shared below. He’s nominated Stuart, who joined us back in November – Stuart, once you’re up and running, give us a little update? I’m going to be a little greedy and get in two updates this week :innocent:

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Hey guys :wave: Sorry this post is so overdue, but let’s kick this diary off again :rocket: Things are quite crazy around here as we gear up to submit our application to lift the restrictions on our banking license :muscle: A few things I’ve been working on over the last week:

  • Finalising our ledger service :moneybag: – this part of our core banking system that is the “source of truth” for all transactions. It defines how much money is in each account and records every modification, and is one of the most important pieces of our infrastructure as a bank. In a few months I’d love to share a blog post about how we’ve built this.
  • Working with MasterCard, Faster Payments, Bacs, CHAPS, and lots of the other parties involved in connecting us up to all the UK’s payment networks :electric_plug:
  • RFC’s :writing_hand: – internally in the engineering team, we like to share “Request For Comments” for stuff we’re thinking about building so other engineers can comment on the design before it gets built. Hopefully in a few years these can serve as interesting “pieces of history” showing why we made the decisions we did. Over the weekend I wrote two RFC’s, one about improving how we isolate services from each other on our network, and one about how we can assert the identity of services to each other when they communicate :nerd:
  • Interviewing! :speaking_head: We’re looking to really grow our engineering team this year.
    Maybe you should come and work with us :wink:

Next week, I nominate Stuart. I see he doesn’t yet have an account on the forum, but I’ll make sure he gets one :smile:

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Hey everyone! I now have an account after some very subtle reminders :grimacing:

I suppose as it is my first post I should introduce myself! I am the new Head of Financial Difficulties at Monzo (although I don’t feel new as we are growing so fast). :rocket:

My role is to make sure that if our customers do find themselves in difficulties they get the help and assistance they need! :ok_hand: I have a lot of experience working with customers in financial difficulties (including being a debt adviser at a Citizens Advice Bureau) and so unfortunately I have experienced a lot of situations where financial institutions haven’t given customers the help and assistance they need/deserve.:disappointed: But i’ve got to say with the culture and people we have here I strongly believe we will do this better than anyone else and I am very, very excited about what we can achieve! :muscle:

So what have I been doing since I joined… :thinking: Mainly I have been:

  • Finalising our financial difficulties and vulnerable customers policies and procedures which have been sent to the regulators. :pen_ballpoint:
  • Setting up and getting ready to deliver training on our approach to the above. :mortar_board:
  • Helping out with complaints and making up for it where we have made mistakes and learning from them so they don’t happen again. :heart:
  • Assisting with the design and implementation of our Quality Assurance to help ensure our customers are getting a consistently great service! (cannot think of an appropriate QA emoji)

That’s kind of bigger than a weekly update - since it’s my first one, I think I can get away with it right? Next week I nominate the amazing @Tara

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Very much in favour of a weekly diary. Was just about to post the same thing

Hello! :wave:

I am also new to the community but have been working at Monzo for nearly three months now. That doesn’t seem like long but by Monzo standards I’m pretty much ancient by now :older_woman: I am the Office Manager which essentially means that I make sure Monzo towers is a safe place to work and that the people who work here are as happy as possible.

So what am I currently working on?

  • Priority numero uno: Moving us into our new home! We have steadily outgrown the current Monzo office, and so we are ready and eager to move into the next one. I have found our new home but we’re now just going through the legals before we can start making the move. Sadly, that takes time but I’m super excited for us to shed our shell and move into our new one. :snail:
  • We have a new starter today so I will be giving her a tour of the new office and getting her settled. Part of onboarding at Monzo includes a welcome box, you can see the key contents below:
  • Today is actually meant to be the most depressing day of the year. In a bid to try and turn the day around we are having a team lunch all together. While we have lunch everyone will receive a Slack message with anonymous compliments from people within the team that we have collected over the last two weeks. Everyone is busy all the time and so it’s nice to take the opportunity to take a moment to show that we all appreciate each other as humans. It’s a bit cheesy but I am essentially made of :cheese:. We’ll also be playing our ‘Positive vibes’ playlist to get us in the mood to tackle the week.
  • Organising a beer tasting to accompany our Knowledge Share on Wednesday. The knowledge share session will be held by the lovely Andy and it’s on building ios apps.
  • I have a few interviews booked in so will be on the hunt for wonderful people to join our team. If you’re looking for a new challenge and love Monzo you can check out our careers page. We’re actually looking for someone to join our People team as a hiring co-ordinator so check it out and share it with anyone you think is great and might be interested.
  • I am then going to Budapest for the weekend. This is not for work but for fun but I will be taking my trusty Monzo card along with me :+1:

TLDR: Finding our new office, socials to make Monzo workers happy, interviews.

Wow, Stuart thought his was long. Apologies! So that’s all that’s going on with me this week! If you want any extra info to do with anything then please let me know, happy to share what we’re up to.

Hope everyone has a good week! I nominate Jarno for the second update this week!

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Hey hey :blush:

I’m Jarno, I’m new here! I’ve been at Monzo for ~3 weeks now so I’m getting my head around all of the tools and processes here at Monzo in my role in :sparkles::sparkles::sparkles: Business Operations :sparkles::sparkles::sparkles:

I spend a lot of my time doing customer support, chatting to our lovely users when they have questions, feedback, and stuff that needs sorting out. This gives me a really good idea of where things are going well and where they could use some attention. :male_detective:

I’m also turning all sorts of Monzo cogs in the background :gear:️ making sure your shops appear correctly in your feed is one example :blush:

I’m still getting to grips with everything so there’s lots of asking silly questions :raising_hand: but I work with a really great team (who put up with my constant confusion)

It’s really exciting to be part of making something so cool!

For the next update I nominate @Anthony :tada:

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Hello!

I’m Anthony, and I run Card Operations at Monzo :credit_card::gear:. Now that I have an account I’m sure you’ll see me around here a lot more!

I joined Monzo around 2 months ago and since then I’ve been:

  • Keeping the different plates spinning needed to ensure you get your cards delivered :postbox::credit_card: to you when you sign up or lose your current one! This is mainly the work of our great part-time team who come in every day to hand fill, label, and send out the card envelopes. I make sure they have everything they need to do this by coordinating with our suppliers
  • Visiting card manufacturers :credit_card: :factory: across the country to explore options for who will make our cards in the future. This was great to see all the production lines and the details of how cards are made and printed - like How It’s Made on the discovery channel!
  • Looking forward to when we launch: speaking with card suppliers to negotiate our SLAs (Service Level Agreements) and looking at delivery options in order to make the process of getting a Monzo debit card as quick and hassle-free as possible :credit_card: :dash:

For next week I’ll nominate Will-S!

See yous later

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Hi everyone, hope you’re well. :grinning:

I’m Will and I work in Business Operations. I’ve been at Monzo for just under two months and it’s been amazing!

My job is to make the company run better, whether that’s improving procedures, project managing different initiatives or helping a customer. It’s a great place to work because there’s total transparency and everyone is super talented and productive. The people and culture make it a breeze. :beach: :tropical_drink:

I’m spending most of my time:

  • In Customer Support, dealing with our awesome customers’ queries :question:
  • Refining our procedures, such as how we handle outages (when some or all of our services go down) :bomb:
  • Working on our migration to current accounts :credit_card:
  • Drinking coffee. It’s remarkable what you can get through :coffee:

I was a fan of Monzo long before I joined so it’s really cool to help build something that I believe in.

That’s all from me folks, but as Arnie said, I will be back. :robot:

I nominate @Beth for the next one… :wink:

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Hi :wave: I’m Beth and I’m part of the Customer Ops team :muscle: You might recognise my face from the little photos of the team on the help screen :blush:.

I started with Will 2 months ago now :calendar:. I think my emoji usage has tripled since then!

What I’ve loved most so far, is seeing how the experiences you share with us in CS (which in turn we share with the Product team) really make a difference to the development of the app :iphone:. The recent iOS update which enables you to get a PIN reminder using your Touch ID :point_up_2: is a great example of this!

This week the CS team have been trialling a new procedure for how we manage all the queries we receive :love_letter:. With more and more Monzonauts signing up, this is quite a challenge :sweat_smile:! Since the start of this year we’ve been having more than 4000 conversations a week (last week reaching 4900) :chart_with_upwards_trend:. The waiting time might be a little longer whilst we get used to this, but overall it seems people are much happier and are no longer being passed from person to person to get a final answer!

I nominate @sarahm for the next update!

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Hiya! I’m Sarah and I started at Monzo in Customer Ops like Beth, responding to customer queries! :tada:

I’m now working as a Financial Crime Analyst. This involves a lot of different day-to-day elements, with an overall focus on how we minimise our fraud exposure without compromising user experience :male_detective:

This week I’ve been working on how we can keep you up to date if you submit a chargeback request (to claim funds back from a merchant for any reason) :money_with_wings: and how we can make this most efficient once we launch our full current accounts :raised_hands: :blush: . I’ve also been getting up to date with all of our Financial Crime procedures (and asking loads of questions in the process!) :books:

For the next update I’ll nominate @sunny

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Hi :relaxed: I am Sunny and I work in Digital Marketing and Paid Acquisition :pound:

I spend most of the time:

  • Looking for cost-effective ways to spread the word about Monzo, especially to people who do not know us :grinning:
  • Converting people who have been in touch with us (e.g. those who are following our Facebook page) to become Monzo users :sparkles: and keeping existing users engaged
  • Building spreadsheets to analyse the different components of Monzo’s customer acquisition funnel (acquisition, activation, retention, referral and revenue) :chart_with_upwards_trend:

I joined Monzo last month and I have been enjoying it. Everyone is so supportive of social media :wink:

I’ll nominate @priyesh for the next update :relieved:

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Hello! :wave:

I’m Priyesh and I’m an engineer here at Monzo. This week has been super busy; here are some things I’ve been working on:

  • Working on our upcoming crowdfunding round :pound:. As you may have noticed from our roadmap, we’re doing things a bit differently this time :wink:. Keep your eyes peeled for more details about this :soon:.
  • Reducing common customer support queries :speech_balloon:. Lots of customers get in touch for PIN reminders and to change their address. Viewing your PIN via Touch ID was the first step to productising these common requests, and we’re now working on some further improvements.
  • Optimising our backend: a bit of spring cleaning to shave some precious milliseconds off of the requests our mobile apps make.
  • Kicked off the work for profile pictures :camera_with_flash:. We’ve received lots of requests for this one, perhaps @hugo will show you a sneak peek of what this will look like?
  • Thinking about the details surrounding identity verification for our upcoming current accounts :page_with_curl:.
  • This week we’ve also been busy completing self-assessments and peer reviews for one another :pencil:. Feedback and development is really important at Monzo, so we put lots of effort into this process.

For the next update, I nominate @tomd. In the mean time, have a great weekend! :beach:

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Why the TouchID to view PIN? :sob: Why not be able to view it in the app without the need to compel use of TouchID or a phone with that built in? :angry:

EDIT I forgot Hugo answered this in another thread “By the time we offer full current accounts we’ll be able to do that kind of thing. For now we can’t store/use the card number or security code”

I’m guessing its the easiest way of securing against similtaneous phone and card theft. Can’t assume all users will have secure lockscreen, and an app specific password can be forgotten like the pin

Also for anybody concerned about lack of security in the Monzo app (a subject that has been mentioned before) there are apps available such as one by Norton which enable you to secure apps which may lack a signin password or PIN, or add a second layer to those app which already have such security. The Norton one gives you an option of securing with a Password or a PIN or by drawing a pattern on your screen.

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Oi, I forgot about that locker apps exist, since I didn’t need it anytime recently! Thanks, @anon44204028. :smiley:

I never want the app PIN protected by default. It would be infuriating. My iPhone has enough security features that I don’t need or want it on the app. However - anything that moves money out of my account should have that additional protection layer.

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@anon44204028 just a quick reminder, you raised this issue in this post & this was Hugo’s comment -

we’re a little off topic here…

Hi all!

I’m Tom D and I’m the Treasurer at Monzo. That doesn’t mean I sit on a giant treasure chest, but I do manage all the :dollar:. At the moment I’m working on our year end accounts :nerd: and helping set up a budgeting process for our next financial year, having just completed our financial model and project managed the process for integrating a payment scheme :money_with_wings:. This might sound slightly less fun than everyone else’s stories…but I love what I do :heart_eyes:!

I nominate @zancler for the next update :grin:

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Hello everyone!

I’m Zander, one third of the Monzo design team — I spend most of my time working on the iPhone and Android apps you use, as well as updates and changes to the website :smile:

This week I’ve been bouncing around a few different things (this is pretty consistent every week!). Specifically I’ve been:

  • Redesigning how inviting and Golden Tickets work. You can now see who you’ve invited and how influential you are in the :monzo: community
  • Designing Search for Android that @emmag is about to build!
  • Creating a Help screen on Android and iPhone (not just chat). We’re going to be incrementally improving the experience when you’ve got a question in the app
  • @valerio has written the best terms and conditions for any bank ever, and I was working on how to display them in app/website/email/pdf
  • @hugo and I met with some of the Home Office digital team today to discuss building products that work for everyone (and other nerdy design stuff)
  • We kicked off a project inside of bankification that relates to your salary and the Spending screen. Maybe we’ll have a sneak peek soon :wink:

That’s all from me, a bit of a pick-n-mix.

Next up I nominate @kavi, our newest member of the Android team!

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