Not meaning to bump an old thread but it appears to be the most appropriate place to continue the ethics discussion.
I was reading about the energy switching feature and commented to propose a question as to whether Monzo would ever consider providing the ability for customers to switch to an energy company which provided electricity that wasn’t renewable (i.e: polluting and contributing to climate change).
The answer was, yes it would, and I can totally see how this makes sense from a traditional commercial perspective, giving customers a full breadth of choice lets them feel better about the Monzo experience.
Ahem, I would argue though that the after last 100 years of rampant capitalism reaping of the world’s resources, giving the customer exactly what they want hasn’t really contributed anything towards a sustainable or healthier future for us all, but I digress.
My angle is that I see areas like this as an opportunity for businesses to help push us all to a better future. Tesla is probably the best example of this, in that their entire mission is not to make amazing electric cars, but to Accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable transport. Which is a mammoth but perfectly achievable goal for them (which they appear to be succeeding at). Monzo’s is to create the world’s best current account, which is perhaps harder to fulfill as it’s much more subjective and can be interpreted differently by different people. My personal “best bank business in the world” would, amongst other things, have a zero carbon footprint and empower its customers to do the same easily.
All this did get me thinking back to Monzo’s ethics as a company. Whilst Monzo’s business is generally wildly innovative, Ethics policy feels lacking to that of even traditional banks. Existing discussion around ethics has tended to focus on investment ethics (obviously very important!) but it would be great to see Monzo lay out some other ethical policy on environment and sustainability. What are Monzo’s guiding principles on Environment policy? Is Monzo taking any steps to reduce its impact on the environment? Where does Monzo get its leccy from?
This is an area where, unsurprisingly, ethical banks take a strong view (Triodos, Co-Op).
Working towards decarbonisation is something that benefits every person on earth and seeing commercial enterprise in every sector of business work towards this goal is always a positive thing, as a customer this is something I value in a business.