Monzo launches a premium account - but is it any good? - MSE News

colsten

Ben8282 wrote: »

Is this serious?
It would be no good for me anyway as I am older than the maximum age limit of the travel insurance and would certainly have no use for the 'Swag'.
Is this sort of age discrimination legal? I can understand travel insurance policies excluding those of very advanced age for obvious reasons, but a maximum age of 35?
Those aged over 35 should withdraw their business from Monzo in protest.

It's 46, according to the MSE article. Whether 46 or 35, it's a weird limit but I reckon totally legal. It's a commercial decision the provider can take. Nobody can force them to provide insurance to people they don't want to insure.

I think they might be missing a trick by excluding cash- and time-rich older travellers but I don't have insight into the travel insurance market and the profitable customers might be those under 46.....but who knows. May be someone with more knowledge of the subject will come along and enlighten us.

Monzo appear to be determined to market to the younger professionals, and are seemingly not very interested in oldies like myself. I am a Monzo account holder but they haven't bothered as yet telling me about their irrresistable :rotfl: new offerings

d123

colsten wrote: »

Monzo appear to be determined to market to the younger professionals, and are seemingly not very interested in oldies like myself. I am a Monzo account holder but they haven't bothered as yet telling me about their irrresistable :rotfl: new offerings

Well, they do know your date of birth .

arnoldy

Read todays Telegraph (Saturday 27th April). They have been well and truly found out. Telegraph article says that they give you far less interest then you would get going to their 'partners' direct. Up to 20% less interest. Thank goodness I was never suckered into the hype.

colsten

This is the Tele/Torygraph article: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal-banking/current-accounts/monzo-account-may-costing-think/

Sadly, it's a bit of a faff to get access to the entire article but it can be done

jonnygee2

Read todays Telegraph (Saturday 27th April). They have been well and truly found out. Telegraph article says that they give you far less interest then you would get going to their 'partners' direct. Up to 20% less interest

I had already done that math. For me, for a current account the main criteria is usability. I don't mind losing out on a few pounds of interest and cashback. My average current account balance is about £500 so interest isnt a huge factor.

Obviously that's different for my savings, which I always keep in the highest interest accounts possible.

I do get that some people prefer to squeeze every pound out of the system they can and that Monzo isn't the right bank for that.

MDMD

arnoldy wrote: »

Read todays Telegraph (Saturday 27th April). They have been well and truly found out. Telegraph article says that they give you far less interest then you would get going to their 'partners' direct. Up to 20% less interest. Thank goodness I was never suckered into the hype.

It’s not exactly cutting edge journalism, just another of those filler articles for when they can’t find enough to make up the section.

It’s well known and all published on the Monzo website:
https://monzo.com/blog/2019/04/26/savings-marketplace/

We can’t guarantee to always offer the best possible savings rate, and you may get a different rate if you go to the savings provider directly. But we do believe that:

We can make it simple for customers to get a great interest rate, all visible in one place
We can make it simple for other banks to raise deposits to fund their lending business
We can make Monzo sustainable by earning a small fee from the other banks

It is exactly what Hargreaves Lansdown do too, who frankly make enough money ripping off their customers with the exit, closure fees etc

https://www.hl.co.uk/investment-services/active-savings/faqs

We don’t charge you directly, instead we charge the banks up to 0.25% of balances held per year. This means the same or similar products offered directly by the banks and building societies may have different interest rates to those available on Active Savings.

Any service is just the same, if you want your life to be made more convenient then there’s a cost somewhere...

arnoldy

"you may get a different rate if you go to the savings provider directly"


Note the studious avoidance of the phrase better rate.


Lots of virtue signalling & PR hype but underneath no better or worse than Barclays, HL etc in the round as said by the above posters.

colsten

arnoldy wrote: »

Lots of virtue signalling & PR hype but underneath no better or worse than Barclays, HL etc in the round as said by the above posters.

For savers, I think they are worse than alternatives which are easy to find.

I think that these days, very few people would accept mediocre savings rates in return for having all their accounts with one bank. In addition, it is high risk to keep all your money with a single bank, even if it's less than £85K.

For people who use overdrafts, Monzo are also significantly worse than others as their charges are sky high.

colsten

MDMD wrote: »

It’s not exactly cutting edge journalism, just another of those filler articles for when they can’t find enough to make up the section.

It’s well known and all published on the Monzo website:
https://monzo.com/blog/2019/04/26/savings-marketplace/

I find the Telegraph article more informative than the Monzo Marketing blurb.

MDMD wrote: »

It is exactly what Hargreaves Lansdown do too, who frankly make enough money ripping off their customers with the exit, closure fees etc

https://www.hl.co.uk/investment-services/active-savings/faqs

Any service is just the same, if you want your life to be made more convenient then there’s a cost somewhere...

The HL savings rates are abysmal, and I can't see many people making use of their offers whilst the rates are uncompetitive.

I don't know [but can guess] how Raisin are making their money, but their offerings seem to have the exact same rate you'd get if you went to the provider directly. That is, if the provider actually has the products on offer directly, which is not always the case.

ozaz

its_all_over wrote: »

Sounds like Monzo has gone a bit mental now.

£13 a month for that?

A different colour card, travel insurance and a bit extra foreign use?

It's not £13/month. The base package will surely have been improved by the time that component increases from £3 to £6/month. But I would agree that even £10/month (the actual cost for the components listed above) is still very poor value.