Monzo has been censured by the competition watchdog after the digital bank failed to provide thousands of customers who were closing accounts with copies of their transaction histories.
Banks are required to send this information as a matter of course, but Monzo omitted to do so for 13,566 account-holders between the end of May last year and the start of March.
Monzo broke the same rules between 2020 and 2021, when 143,437 customers were affected.
Adam Land, a senior director at the Competition & Markets Authority, said: “It’s simply not good enough for a major bank like Monzo to repeatedly fail its customers by not following clear rules. Having a record of your financial transactions can act as important evidence needed to secure a loan or mortgage, so Monzo’s failure to provide these put an unnecessary obstacle in the way of thousands of customers.”
The watchdog does not have the power to impose a fine, but it can issue legally binding instructions to avoid a repeat. It has ordered Monzo to “take all steps within the bank’s competence reasonably necessary” to comply with the rules and to review its processes with an independent third-party auditor.
Monzo is one of a new breed of fast-growing digital lenders that are taking market share from Britain’s big high street banks. It was founded in 2015 and is led by Tummalapalli Sai Anil, 51, who became the bank’s chief executive two years ago.
Monzo revealed in its annual report last July that it was being investigated by the Financial Conduct Authority over potential breaches of anti-money laundering rules.
Monzo said: “Unfortunately, due to a processing error, some customers were not proactively issued with historic transaction data. However, this information was always available to these customers at their request.
“As soon as we were aware of this issue, we fixed it on the same day and contacted all impacted customers as soon as possible. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.”