So something I’ve got a keen interest in lately, are “B Corporations”. From Wikipedia, (edited slightly)
The B Corp certification is a third party standard requiring companies to meet social sustainability and environmental performance standards, meet accountability standards, and to be transparent to the public according to the score they receive on the assessment. B Corp certification applies to the whole company across all product lines and issue areas.
Today more than ever before, businesses and business leaders are stepping up and showing there’s more to business than profit; with sustainability, transparency, and generally ‘doing good’ for the world being as important as profit.
I know Monzo are still very young as a business - but a lot of the ideals of B Corp do seem to be shared by Monzo.
So generally, wondered if the Monzo team have had any thoughts on that?
I think we’ve now approached a point where (sorry to use the term “millennials”) are becoming the core customer base for most companies.
People in this age bracket want different things to previous generations mainly because of being brought up in the digital age.
Morals and ethics are becoming more important in day to day life too.
It’s good that business is finally realising that money doesn’t actually make the world go round after all.
Monzo and it’s all inclusive way of thinking has already set a benchmark in my eyes and it would take something drastically fantastic for me to not recommend them as the best bank on the market right now.
I’m just gonna call this now, between the reply to this topic, this response in the weekly Q&A and Tristan choosing to bring up B Corps in his latest interview, I think this is going to happen
His comment in the interview was -
There are various different models that ensure that companies can be pursuing capitalist interests but also social and economic interests. There are things like B corporations that specifically put it as part of their constitution, that they will give equal weighting in their decisions to social and environmental issues as well as just making money.
I was trying to convince a friend to sign up, who said he’d only consider it if he could see it was making a serious commitment to the environment, and to behaving ethically. As it’s still a baby corp with a limited product range there’s only so many opportunities you have to demonstrate your principles (especially considering there aren’t many lending or investment products as yet, where ethics can become murky).
B Corp certification would reassure customers that Monzo are meeting certain environmental and ethical standards, as well as providing a benchmark against their competitors and other organsisations. It’s probably also useful for Monzo as a guide for future decision making in order to maintain their certification.
My original question about this was in (delayed!) response to an episode of The Bottom Line, which explains more about B Corp certification and how it can even work for big businesses (e.g. Danone). Worth a listen if you want to learn more: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09sqrmv.
