This is a really great question, and one that I’ve been thinking a lot about myself.
In the past, we would handle them on a case by case basis, and disburse the funds remaining in the account as appropriate.
Recently, I’ve been working on making this smoother for all involved. I think we have a great opportunity to use our resources to make this process as easy as possible, and avoid any unnecessarily harrowing procedures at what will inevitably be a difficult time for those getting in touch with us.
The discussion above is really interesting, and in the future I’d love to have some brand new features such as trusted contacts to help with this, but for now the executor of the estate would have to get in touch with us.
This could be done in writing, over the phone, or via email. Currently we have help@monzo.com, but we’re going to be setting up bereavements@monzo.com soon to allow us to differentiate these messages much quicker, and get them to someone who can help as quickly as possible.
We’ll need to collect some documents, too. We try hard to keep everything digital, and so we’re happy to accept scanned or clearly photographed copies of the death certificate and Grant of Representation (where required). Of course we can accept these in the post as well if someone finds that easier.
From there, we can transfer the remaining balance and close the account.
This is still a very manual process on our end. I don’t believe we would want it to be anything else; a caring and perosnal experience is paramount here, but I’d love to hear any ideas for how we could use technology to make this better in the future.