Personally i’m not convinced we need another energy or insurance switching service just yet. Monzo should first concentrate on being the best bank possible, rather than mess around with meerkats and moustached tenors.
Here’s what i feel the 3 top priorities should be:
- Improve savings and loans. (There be profits here!)
- Improve summary and budget feature, as it’s currently a bit naff, and looking at Dozens daily budget tracker, it seems to be falling behing competitors! Peggy McGregor recently posted an interesting article about 50/30/20 budgets which I think would really help people if Monzo implemented something to show people what their percentages were and help set a target plus a daily budget traker like Dozens to improve their savings. (Really need to keep up with the competition or risk people not signing up or worse leaving for another fintech)
https://community.monzo.com/t/how-to-use-the-50-20-30-budget-rule/59556 - Be able to see other bank accounts (seriously even legacy banks are doing this! Don’t fall behind legacies in terms of tech fetures, thats just embarrassing!) This would also really help with summary and budgeting.
Here are some other things that should be done but not at the expense of the top 3.
- That Annual summary thing was really interesting, a monthly one would be great.
- Business accounts (I presume there be money here)
- Improve the pulse graph.
- A dark/night theme for the app (so we dont burn our retinas in the evening)
- Monzo plus, but shouldn’t be too expensive or firewall any app features, it needs to be something that adds genuine value like holiday/phone insurance, cashback.
- Euro accounts, before US accounts, i’ve noticed many EU colleagues using Monzo and they’ve all said they wish they could have a euro account for when they go home.
- US accounts.
- Paying in Cheques via app
Finally if Monzo can bring something new to the table in insurance/bill switching then great but dont let it distract for being the best bank possible or risk losing ground to fintech competition.
I look forward to seeing what the market does in 2019 and how Monzo reacts, so far Dozens is looking like an interesting proposition and I like their ethos of making money by making you money. Then there is Viola Black which looks like a terrible proposition with all its charges.