"Every part of the world needs Monzo," says CEO

“Every part of the world needs Monzo” according to its CEO, who has underscored Monzo's global ambitions and hit out at incumbent banks accusing them of being analogue businesses with digital storefronts.

TS Anil also said that Monzo was adding over 100,000 new users each month without paid marketing, and that Monzo’s buy now, pay later offering was launched with an eye on future regulation of the buy now, pay later market.

The CEO was speaking in a video interview with the Economic Times, an Indian English-language business-focused daily newspaper.

Anil, a banking veteran with nearly three decades of experience across international corporations like Visa, Standard Chartered and Capital One, replaced Tom Blomfield as CEO of Monzo in May 2020.

“Our ambition is to be a global company. We’re the leader in the UK, we are investing heavily in the US," Anil told Economic Times.

“Over time, we believe that, you know, every part of the world needs Monzo.

“Customers around the world need the product that Monzo is in their lives, to have them manage their money. My hope is that we continue to expand in the coming years.”

Anil first joined Monzo in December 2019 as its dedicated US CEO to oversee operations across the Atlantic.

In the interview he also hit out at incumbent banks trying to wrestle market share from Monzo by launching their own digital apps, likening them to retailers with an add-on website.

He said: “Everybody can have a website. But it’s not the same as being a digital retailer.  Because a digital retailer solves the problem soup to nuts, right. It’s not about putting a digital store front in front of an analogue business.”

He added that Monzo’s Net Promoter score was 70, while the Net Promoter scores of incumbent banks were “early teens at best”.

Monzo bolstered its offering last year with the launch of a buy now, pay later feature called Monzo Flex.

On Monzo Flex, Anil said: “We built that with a view where the industry should go. We said ‘let’s learn the best from the world of credit cards and BNPL and debit cards and loans and everything.

“Deconstruct that for it to be the best product, you know, mindful of where the regulatory landscape could go and so on.’ We actually future-proofed it in that sense.”

The Monzo CEO also offered his views on the demise of the bank branch.

He said he couldn’t remember the last time he went into a bank branch or if he’d ever had a “great experience” in a branch, which he said should inform the market on whether branches had a future.