“There’s a perception that banks are slow, banks are extremely unhelpful, banks are not here for you.”

The personal banking industry has been crying out for disruption for years. The big names are known for their big waiting times and general glacial pace when it comes to all things new.

Convenience and moving at the pace of the consumer is key to Monzo’s early popularity. Since convenience, as we’ve found, is something consumers value more than security when it comes to financial institutions, it makes total sense.

Customer support is open 24/7, every day of the year. “When we do get messages in for customer support on social media, and we do every day for all sorts of different things, they are always surprised at how fast we are responding to it,” Brenda says. It’s not just responses to questions that work faster, either:

“For example, the way that you can recover your pin if you forget it – in any other legacy bank you have to wait for, I don’t know, at least three to five working days for a letter to be posted to you, for example. You can recover your pin within five minutes on the Monzo app. It’s getting people to understand that everything that you can do with your old bank you can do in the app in a fraction of the time. There’s a perception that banks are slow, banks are extremely unhelpful, banks are not here for you.”

Traditional banks can also be intimidating and less than forgiving.

“I think Monzo’s biggest USP and the reason why people love the product so much is that it is a massively useful budgeting tool. There’s a severe lack of financial education, at least in the society we live in today.”

She’s right – personal finance played little to no part in my education. Dealing with heart-breaking calls from people in deep debt clearly has an effect on Brenda and her colleagues, and she tells me about the various ways Monzo champions education around managing your finances in a world where many people don’t know the difference between a debit card and a credit card. Caught trying to navigate the complex language of banking used by the behemoths, you can see why Monzo’s customer-friendly outlook appeals.

This customer centricity is reflected in the company’s approach to product development, too. Brenda describes Monzo’s Community Forum as a fascinating place for both ardent fans and people with an interest in fintech.

It’s one of the many places the team find customer feedback that can be communicated to the product team.

“You’d be surprised how much we do listen and go, oh, that’s a good idea,” Brenda explains. She says that the ‘coin jar’ functionality that rounds up purchases and saves the left over pennies was originally posted as an idea in the forum by a customer.