We’re tweaking how locked pots work

It’s tricky though. It sounds like part of the Locked Pots concept was designed around helping to manage an amount of impulse control.

If you’re not saving money long term because of that → Locked pot with friction helps.

If you need the additional friction - the new locked pot purpose is not helpful.

When was younger and worse with money - I had a credit card I froze in a block of ice in case of emergencies… That type of friction is helpful!

2 Likes

I agree, but if there were rules from the start, do you people would be more conservative with what they put in?

Do you know if most people needed all of their money or just some to get through to pay day? Maybe if you were only able to get to 20-30% of the money without interacting with cops, that would bring the number of requests down to make it a more viable option?

Yeah that makes perfect sense that is not actually the design that was the friction it was the implementation of the design that made the friction.
Is there any chance of a data release(anonymous and GDPR compliant) as I have my hypothesises and want to see if they match/are close…

1 Like

That’s a fair point. We should also be able to see that data though: Do users create less locked pots now? Do they add less money to them? etc. etc.

6 Likes

Dipping out of this now but did want to say that I find pots, locked and unlocked very useful for ‘casual saving’. If I wanted to put big friction in my own way I’d move them to another bank account altogether. I have that choice.

For me, pots are not intended for Savings (with a capital S) but savings for occasional and near future things. They don’t offer interest so it’s just a way to put money aside. I don’t think the level of friction needs to be massive for that, just needs to be ‘enough’ (ha, define that!).

Anyway, intrigued as to how this plays out, but that’s all part of using something that is still being developed. The other option is that Monzo just launch stuff and its stuck like that for years and years which is… big banking way of working! No thanks!!

Ta to @Hugo for sharing and discussing too, on a hiding to nothing at times I’m sure but great to see the engagement.

5 Likes

These are my three posts from the other thread. They pretty much sums up my opinion.

On being able to unlock your own pot within the app:

Based on the figures given by @BethS stating 20% of locked pots are unlocked by COps and 6.5% of COps time is taken up from unlocking pots:

Based on @Dannytc stating he wanted a location based lock/unlock to create a little friction:

2 Likes

It sounds like if you had consulted with the community, we would have come up with a much better solution then either of the current iterations, something people actually want.

Why wouldn’t you use what you have available?

2 Likes

A lot of this comes back to “what problem are Monzo trying to solve here”?

The first implementation seemed to be solving a different problem to this version (i.e. “I can’t save without friction”) although to @Chapuys point - it seems to work as 80% stay locked as intended.

If you look at the blog announcing in:

It can be tempting to dip into your savings, especially when it only takes a few taps. So, to help you stick to your savings goals, you can now lock your Pots until a date you choose and you won’t be able to take money out till then.

So it’s back at a few taps only.

Hopefully though you get some useful data. I just tried to lock a pot today - so hopefully you have some nice metrics soon on the “why are you locking” that helps inform between impulse control vs long term saving etc.

1 Like

I’m never sure working something on the opinion of a small and self-selected subset of the customer base is a good idea.

Yes, we’d have opinions but ‘use with caution’ ought to be stamped all over them!

7 Likes

Loving the ice!!

1 Like

If you needed to unlock your pot early, what would be your preferred method.

  • Location based
  • Nominate a friend
  • 24hr delay
  • Pin protected (give to a trusted person or hide it)
  • Contact customer operations (old way)
  • Indefinate. No way to unlock it all.
  • Watch the video you made when you created the pot

0 voters

1 Like

Maybe there could be 2 levels of “locked”:

  1. Vault or Safe option - you can access this money fairly easily but with say a 12-24hr wait time - nothing more than entering your PIN to withdraw;

  2. Locked option - here it is locked and only able to withdraw via a third party authorisation/ questionnaire/ some form of extra friction as well as the 24 hour withdraw time.

And on the front end before opening the pot (or locking it) there is a clear bullet pointed summary of what each pot does - that way a customer knows what each “level” does.

I think this allows for both sides of the “locked” argument to have some middle ground.

1 Like

Should have a variable

£0 in pot user can unlock straight away.
£X in pot 24hr delay

1 Like

Location based: I can imagine Monzo encouraging you to go for a walk to unlock the pot
Friend: always good until that friend is unavailable
24hr delay: I’m sceptical that people would always want to wait, or have the option to

How about a trivial question? I know googling the answer is easy, but it’s a thin extra layer and a chance to learn something:

How Long is the Great Wall of China?

13170 miles
That’s right! Still want to unlock your pot?

Come to think of it, could Monzo not automate unlock requests at the back end? Still require the friction of the user going to Help, typing “unlock pot” and what not…

But some form of automation to recognise the query. Similar to how those “user help” automated services work.

If keeping friction for the user is valued, as is reducing COps time… Could this work?

I don’t think this would add the previous level of friction. The reason the previous implementation of locked pots worked so well for me was that there was a delay after you sent the unlock request (until a COp answered) in which you could change your mind and avoid impulse spending.

In my opinion, having the user set the time for a delayed early unlock (from 1 minute to 24 hours) with a firm stance of “I’m sorry but there’s nothing we can do to unlock your pot earlier” from Monzo is the best implementation.

While I sympathise with the idea, not sure Monzo can really go denying you money you asked for from a current account unless there is some suspicion of the origins or you’ve signed a contract (e.g. locked in savings)

I think they tried to be sensitive to that consideration before, but has resulted in too much Cops effort

And i’m not sure it’s helpful if someone’s car has broken down, their washing machine has died, they’ve lost their wallet and can’t feed the kids, or whatever.

3 Likes

Just think of the Trustpilot reviews! :roll_eyes:

1 Like

Same could be said for the interest savings pot as could take 2 days to access over the weekend

3 Likes