Monzo boss: Our tech will help us beat the big banks
The boss of Monzo said the fintech darling is ready to take the fight to traditional lenders and “bets every day of the week” on its chances.
Speaking at the Money 20/20 conference in Amsterdam, TS Anil said the next decade of banking would present “a race between two sides of the industry.”
Anil said “legacy banks and whether they get tech” would square off against “fintech companies… and whether we get banking right.”
Monzo received its full UK banking licence from the Prudential Regulation Authority and Financial Conduct Authority in 2017.
“Where it’s underwriting, Treasury management’s law, operational risk regulation, all of that, we could go toe to toe with anybody on that, but then we will win with the power of technology,” he said.
The ex-Visa and Standard Chartered banker said owning and building its own tech stack gave the challenger bank something traditional players could not compete with.
“We see it has already been put to use in the last few months because there were outages across the incumbent players and Monzo stayed up the entire time.”
FTSE 100 banking juggernauts faced a grilling by the Treasury Committee in May after a string of outages at the beginning of the year. Barclays left customers unable to make transactions for up to 48 hours after an outage in January.
A Treasury Committee report in March revealed nine of the UK’s biggest banks and building societies were down for over 803 hours – the equivalent of 33 days – over the last two years.
Monzo customers soar, but so do current account switchers
The digital bank recorded a customer base of 12.2m in its annual results.
The milestone was reached after the firm launched a fleet of new products, expanding its reach with Monzo Pensions and Monzo for Under 16s.
Anil said its abilities had allowed it to innovate at pace the wider industry “cannot”.
But while he touted Monzo’s ability to “embed [itself] in the daily lives of [its] customers,” recent data shows users are flocking away from the neobank’s offering.
Monzo has clawed a net gain of 929 from current account switchers since the beginning of 2024, according to Pay.UK data.
But for the first two quarters, the firm bled more switchers than it gained.
All eyes on IPO
The City continues to wait on an update from the fintech veteran about a potential public listing.
Monzo topped £1bn in revenue for the first time in the last financial year, as lending surged 36 per cent to £1.9bn and deposits 48 per cent to £16.6bn.
Speculation for an IPO mounted after reports that the firm had called in bankers from Morgan Stanley to steer a blockbuster £6bn float.
Anil reiterated his stance that Monzo would “make a great public company one day”.
“We have the gift of choice, we’re well capitalised, capital accretive, and a business of that scale makes us attractive.”
But the neobank boss said his priorities were ensuring Monzo was a part of “the handful of companies” in the next decade would “transform the relationship customers have with money – and do it at scale”.