How Monzo shelved its mission in favour of profit

Staff accuse the digital lender of ceasing to be a supportive employer as it scrambles to appease investors, reports Simon Foy

When a seasoned operations manager at Monzo was preparing to leave the bank in early 2021, he took to the company’s internal Slack messaging forum to air some grievances.

In a post that could be viewed by all staff, the long-serving employee criticised bosses and the direction in which they were taking the lender, saying Monzo had lost its way and was now overly focused on turning a profit at the expense of employee wellbeing.

The message was swiftly removed by management who said it was unduly critical and diminished the hard work others were doing.

Yet in a show of defiance, other employees started re-posting screenshots of the original message, ultimately forcing management to capitulate. The situation was described by one ex-employee as “a fiasco”.

Two years later and Monzo’s mission to turn a profit is in its final stages, with the challenger bank expecting to break even in 2023 after years of losses. But at what cost?

In a series of interviews with current and former employees, The Telegraph has been told how the digital lender has evolved from being a supportive employer to one that turns the heat on its staff as it races to appease impatient investors.

Known for advertising an “open and inclusive” culture to the outside world, those who have worked there describe a “Big Brother-esque” environment that keeps a close eye on staff in customer service and financial crime teams by tracking their screen time and demanding strict targets, with those falling short taken to task by line managers. “You are being watched constantly,” says one ex-employee. “You are tracked on clicks and have exceptionally high targets to meet.”

The backdrop for the shift has been a change in management and darkening economic outlook across the world, which has made it harder for cash-hungry start-ups to raise cash and forced many to pivot to profits.

Founded in 2015 by a group of former Starling employees led by tech entrepreneur Tom Blomfield, Monzo was one of the earliest digital-only lenders to be launched in the UK. Originally just a pre-payment card tied to an app, it has since grown into a fully fledged bank with seven million customers, £440m in turnover and a market value exceeding £3.7bn as of its last funding round in December 2021.

The company prides itself on promoting diversity and inclusion policies, which, to some, might appear excessive. On its website, Monzo has a near-4,000 word section titled “Our tone of voice”, in which it describes why it urges staff not to use terms such as “blacklist”, “guys” and “elephant in the room”.

It says: “We’ve opened this up to the world… because we want to be held up to the lofty standards we set ourselves.”

Yet those lofty standards have been called into question by people who have worked there, with current and former staff particularly concerned about the use of the BizOps system.

Last month, The Telegraph revealed that Monzo monitors how long employees are glued to their screens via BizOps and rebukes staff if they fall below target times. More than 1,000 operations staff are required to be working on their devices 85pc of the day. One former employee says: “Two weeks before I was due to leave, I had my manager text me saying that I was going to be pulled into a disciplinary meeting. One week I was inactive for a collective three hours over the 60 hours I had worked and they wanted a full explanation as to why I wasn’t showing as active, as they were considering this to be work avoidance.”

Another staff member says they are forced to “go and click buttons” to register that they’re working. “It’s hugely counterproductive,” they add.

Monzo says employees are now only required to report when they are available to carry out work.

Yet confusion appears to reign internally about the system. The Telegraph has been told of an exchange on Monzo’s “media mentions” Slack channel recently, in which senior managers denied having the capability to track staff. This was publicly rebutted by several software engineers involved in running the system.

One employee says: “It became very clear that senior management didn’t understand how BizOps worked… It was quite embarrassing and was quickly taken off Slack.”

An ex-manager in the fraud team explains: “We had to review the data on a daily basis. If they frequently fell below target over a two-week period you’d pull them up on it. After that, if they continued to fail to meet targets, they would be put on a performance improvement programme.”

Not everyone thinks the tracking is unwarranted. A former software engineer says: “The younger generation do like to sit there and twiddle their thumbs.”

Yet insiders say the shift in culture, warranted or not, has been palpable. Several former and current employees pin the change on the departure of Blomfield in early 2021, who said the pandemic and lockdowns exacerbated pressures on his mental health. One insider says: “His leaving seemed to have been quite a big catalyst.”

Another adds: “The culture changed massively. Pressure from not being profit-making really flowed down.” An insider says: “It just feels like everyone who started Monzo is no longer there… and it seems like the company has strayed from its values.”

As well as Blomfield’s departure, it is understood that Jonas Templestein, Monzo’s co-founder and technology chief, is now taking an extended break owing to caregiver leave. An interim replacement has been brought in.

Before leaving, Blomfield took an extended leave of absence with fintech executive Eileen Burbridge stepping in as interim chief before former Standard Chartered and Visa executive TS Anil took the reins full-time.

Since Anil took over, the company’s financial performance has slowly improved. In 2021, it narrowed losses to £119m from £130m a year earlier. Anil has publicly predicted Monzo will be profitable in 2023. The race to profitability comes as fintechs face growing pressure to stand on their own two feet after years of funding themselves through growth-focused investment rounds.

As interest rates rise and the economic outlook darkens, money has become harder to come back, forcing many tech and start-up companies to instigate drastic cost-cutting measures to reach short-term profitability.

Anil has said he plans to list the business on the stock market but has yet to give a specific timeline. Such a listing would give the company easier access to capital.

In a sign of it ditching its more eccentric tendencies, Monzo has dropped the term “squad captain” in favour of “team manager”.

While many are critical of its shifting culture, some speak positively of Monzo as an employer. One ex-staffer says: “I can’t say much bad about them. They’re a good employer and are brilliant with disabled employees.”

Another praises its embrace of home-working, even before the pandemic hit: “They run a fantastic operation, though they do use it as the reason to watch us like hawks.” Others are less complimentary. In an email,

‘They watch everything we do. It’s very regimented and Big Brother-esque, Orwellian even’

one former employee who was on probation was told to attend a review meeting where they were warned that Monzo could terminate their contract after the meeting owing to concerns about their activity performance.

That person, who also claims they were told to ask their manager if they could use the lavatory when working remotely, says: “I was constantly anxious and worried I was going to lose my job every single day. I spoke to my manager who looked at my stats daily and I would tell her I can’t work under these insane conditions for such a low paid job. In the end I left without another job to go to because they just killed my spirit. I’d rather have no money than work for them ever again.”

Monzo denies that staff need to seek permission to use the lavatory.

Another ex-employee who recently departed says: “They watch everything we do. It’s very regimented and Big Brother-esque, Orwellian even.”

A spokesman for Monzo says: “The negative framing, supported by a handful of dated experiences, paints an inaccurate and misleading picture of an internal culture at Monzo that is worlds away from who we are and our values. We’re LinkedIn’s top start-up to work for and maintain consistently high employee satisfaction scores.

“These are just some of the reasons why we continue to attract top talent across our business.”