On paper, the idea was good. Taking up the principle of the “musical retrospective” offered by the streaming platform Spotify and many others, the neobank Monzo has decided to put together a small personalized summary for each of its customers. A fun bulletin in which the online bank sifts through its customers’ payment data to tell them where and when they spent the most money in 2023, but also the details of their savings… The aggregated results allow thus to highlight a peak in spending in cinemas on July 22, the release date of the films Oppenheimer and Barbie, but also to underline the very high rate of nighttime transactions in Leicester, crowned “English party capital” by the bank. Except that according to the comments left on social networks, some customers would have done without these revelations.
While sharing the results of their retrospective, many Internet users were annoyed by the conclusions drawn by the online bank on X (formerly Twitter). “Why does Monzo think I need a summary of all my shameful habits?” grumbled an English customer upon learning that a good part of his annual income had been squandered in a London bar. Like him, dozens of other customers were moved by the image conveyed by the summary of their expenses. Upon discovering that she was among the 5% of customers who spent the most at the drinks and food vending machine, a British woman humorously indicated that “it was certainly the saddest thing” that he had told her. never happened. “Thanks Monzo,” she concluded wryly. A young American, for his part, could not digest being called to order for his long orders placed at McDonald’s. “Who decided to let Monzo Bank design a retrospective? They just called me fat for no reason,” he complained on December 25.
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If these negative reactions are not necessarily representative of Monzo’s 7 million customers, they say a lot about the limits of personalized retrospectives, the new favorite of companies. In an article that Le Figaro devoted to the subject on December 23, a marketing teacher believed that retrospectives are only of interest if “the brands in question have values or positive affects to convey.” “Young people, in particular, like to promote responsible consumption,” remarked the expert, citing the example of the Retrainspective launched by the SNCF. Conversely, polluting or unethical purchasing acts do not really make consumers proud. “It’s hard to imagine UberEat reminding us of all the times we didn’t have the strength to get up from our sofa,” the specialist joked. It does seem that Monzo has fallen into this pitfall…
For Patrice Bernard, financial consultant and author of the blog “It’s not my idea”, the misstep of online banking is due to the difficulty of its subject, money. “These demonstrations reflect the immense diversity of consumer feelings when it comes to their money, multiplied when they are confronted with their behavior and their contradictions in this area,” notes the specialist. Monzo’s misfortune also demonstrates the increased lucidity of customers, now able to discern the marketing operation behind the personalized gift. “This is a warning to the entire financial sector about the danger of viewing all customers as a homogeneous group, on which personalization efforts only serve marketing objectives,” he believes. Not to mention the hot topic of personal data, since each retrospective of this type recalls the colossal amount of data collected by tech giants. For neo-banks, the question arises with even greater urgency as financial data remains considered sensitive data.
For now, Monzo does not seem particularly concerned about the controversy arising from its operation. To those who are not satisfied with the results of their retrospectives, fintech suggests that the numbers are the numbers. “We’re sorry to hear you’re not a fan of your year in the Monzo era, but we can’t reanalyze your results,” one reads on his website. Going against the “bad buzz”, Monzo is even counting on its end-of-year initiative to recruit new customers in 2024. “Start spending and saving on Monzo to get your recap next year”, encourages the neobank.
