Why the slowdown in the Current Account Roll Out?

Do you believe 2 credit checks will actually hurt your score enough to impact your life? Quite interested as I’ve many and never seems to drop my score

If you keep applying for credit does it not look bad?

It can, but even a full credit check “disappears” after a few months. So long as you aren’t making more than one or two every 6 months you’ll be fine.

Monzo isn’t a full check anyway, so nobody but you will see theirs. I actually think it’s the same with Starling.

It’s a ‘soft’ search with both Monzo and Starling. When you take an overdraft, Starling then complete a ‘hard’ search. I’d imagine Monzo will do the same.

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I got declined for a Starling account and they said it was due to the credit check so I assumed it was a full check. Monzo had no problem with their soft check, so either they have different criteria or Starling do a different check.

Starling offered very little feedback, I had to contact them to see why I couldn’t progress into the app to be told I’d failed the check :roll_eyes:

Did you apply for an overdraft too? I just checked my credit account and no search was made by Starling.

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Nope, just opening an account.

I applied for Starling and had a look at my credit report there were three searches made by them. I think they do a full hard search.Starling

That’s not a credit search they are just doing a soft search there to check your details. I believe that is the law and they are required to do this. Those three won’t show on your credit report for any companies so will have no affect on your credit rating or score

I just asked Starling for confirmation:

IMG_0796

So no, it’s the same as Monzo.

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I am sure you are correct but I applied for Monzo CA as well yesterday and there was nothing on my Credit report.

By the sounds of this, you failed the checks they are required to by law - maybe your details didn’t match up. Anti-money laundering is a big issue for banks so they won’t mess around with anyone who might look like they are committing this. Not that you are!

It might be that you have a seriously low score or seriously bad debts (defaults, CCJ’s etc) that might mean a current account isn’t right for you and a basic bank account is the right one for you. This will be up to each bank, and Starling obviously have criteria. I wouldn’t know that part as it’s really between you and the bank.

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It depends on which credit agency you use/Monzo use. Not all credit agencies are informed by companies searching so it might show on 1 but not on the other 2.

If a search is done, soft or otherwise, it will show on a credit report somewhere.

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I’ve been watching the live account counter and there’s not been too much movement this week, are you still on track for 3k acounts this week? :smiley:

The problem with sending out cards will have put a pause - the tracker updates when cards are received and activated. Expect there to be a bump on Saturday and Monday!

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Yeah in case anyone’s wondering, Tristan gave us a heads up about this yesterday -

Yeah, just echoing some of Tristan’s comments. We had a couple of minor issues producing and sending plastic cards, which delayed things by a week or so.

Apologies - it’s been a little frustrating, but hopefully it’s fixed now.

You should see the numbers of current accounts rise rapidly over the next few weeks.

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In the interest of transparency, are you able to divulge which issues have caused the delay? :slight_smile:

I know both Starling and Monzo have quite forgiving scoring, for past issues at least (I have defaults and an IVA from 4 years ago showing, but no new problems), most mainstream banks would restrict me to a basic account only. Starling offered me a small (as yet unused) overdraft

Sure - the first issue was that one of our card suppliers got the wrong shade of hot coral, so we had to reprint cards!

Second problem was a bug in our system that meant customer delivery addresses weren’t formatted 100% correctly when we sent them to the card supplier, so they rejected the orders for a couple of days.

All fixed now - I believe we’ve sent out a big batch of current account debit cards today.

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You should do something creative with the dodgy batch, maybe create some new artwork for the office :smiley:

image

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