Wondering what reasons people had for securing approval from Monzo when it came to selling shares?
Previously I secured approval because I needed the money for exams. I was recently rejected for the reason of getting a deposit together to buy a house. Strange the the largest financial purchase of someone’s life wasn’t a valid reason.
Thanks in advance
Are you looking to sell? It feels like asking publicly on their own site how to get around their rules isn’t the best route to get an answer that will work - you are just alerting them to what you plan on doing.
Sorry if that isn’t the case though.
If someone else had the same valid reason as me and received approval then I can go back to Monzo and query the inconsistency.
I also have some debt that I need to repay, in addition to wanting to raise a house deposit, I would imagine that these would be valid reasons.
Exams and wanting the money for a house seem different enough to me.
The fact that you’ve now contacted them twice to sell the shares you shouldn’t be selling might have affected their decision too.
Successfully sold shares for exams
You’re lucky you were able to sell for this reason. An old friend of mine was subject to a debt recovery plan & so wanted to sell his shares to pay off some debt. That wasn’t allowed.
For something that you knew was not easily traded, and were warned about that couldn’t be sold unless for extreme circumstances it seems odd that a house purchase could be considered a valid reason.
Valid reasons as I took it were for payment for unmanageable and unexpected financial problems where the money would help. Not to try to early exit your investment to buy property.
All in all, though, the decision process seems rather random.
Probably. But there’s nothing to stop Monzo even letting people sell, so I guess any fortunate seller has been lucky. Instead of unlucky for being disallowed.
I wouldn’t say random. From my observation of forum chat over the years, it seems like Monzo were a little lax in applying the ‘extreme circumstances’ exception initially because there weren’t that many people trying to sell. Then at some point the volume of people trying to sell must have crossed a threshold that they had to apply it more strictly from that point on.
Likely because it’s not extenuating circumstances. You’re not suddenly forced into buying a house.
Buying a house might not be a very good sob story in their eyes. You’re basically telling them you want to move your assets from Monzo shares and into Real Estate.
A better reason would be that your mortgage is being foreclosed and you will be homeless if you don’t come up with the money, or your loved one died and you need to pay for their funeral, or something… anything but that you want to sell Monzo to buy different assets!
There has definitely been a tightening of their enterpretation of the rules in the last few years. I think it’s because it involves Crowdcube’s legal team and Monzo’s Board and none of them are getting paid extra for it, they are doing a favour by taking exception to your case. Neither of them are interested in going the extra mile for people who they probably think are bending the rules. Especially if you’ve already called in this favour from them before for trivial reasons.
Hope my tone doesn’t imply judgement. I think anyone should be able to sell their shares to whoever they want and whenever they want, but I don’t make the rules 
You do make sense, only thing is you need to provide evidence of the reason - otherwise it’s fraudulent.
Frustrating that they don’t freely allow transactions
Fair.
I wonder though if there needs to be any friction around selling, given there is (or has been) interest in buying. Or has that ship sailed…
Wait till the IPO. Maybe there’s a cost involved for Monzo and they want to hold people to the obligations they freely entered into when they invested, but are allowing extenuating circumstances fro those in genuine financial difficulty, or potential financial hardship.
I’ve no actuations insight here, so I’m only guessing 