Monzo accused of ‘especially concerning’ regulatory breaches by competition watchdog 

Monzo has been reprimanded by the UK competition regulator in a pattern described as “especially concerning”. 

Colin Garland, director of markets at the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) wrote to the challenger bank regarding multiple breaches of the Retail Banking Market Investigation Order 2017. 

According to the regulator, Monzo has breached four different sections of the order, which was implemented to reform the competitiveness of the retail banking market. 

Among the accusations against Monzo are publishing inaccurate surveys regarding the quality of service from banks, failing to properly publish the monthly maximum charge associated with its current accounts, failing to publish the representative rate for loans on its business banking site and failing to notify the CMA of its breaches within 14 days of becoming aware of them. 

Garland noted that Monzo has breached sections of the Order previously, “making this especially concerning” and forcing the CMA to “monitor Monzo’s future compliance closely”. 

In February 2022, the CMA warned Monzo over earlier breaches as it similarly failed to sufficiently disclose the monthly minimum charge for its personal current account.

Despite the breaches, Garland wrote that at this time the CMA “does not consider it appropriate to take further formal enforcement action in relation to these breaches”. 

The warning from the CMA comes a month after fellow challenger bank Starling was handed a £29m fine for not implementing adequate financial crime prevention measures on “high-risk” accounts.  

This week, Monzo co-founder and former CEO Tom Blomfield took to social media to call out competition regulators as “religious zealots”. 

“Competition regulators are like a bunch of religious zealots trying to tell the rest of us how to live our lives based on their sacred texts,” Blomfield said. 

“Regulators always think more regulation is best. How about we try less regulation this time?” 

Blomfield’s comments were not directed specifically at the CMA and followed calls from US regulators to force Google to sell its web browser Chrome. 

Read more: Monzo appoints former Nubank executive as group CFO 

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