In an era when banks proclaim customer-centricity at every conference stage, few deliver on the promise in a consistently structured way. At Money 20/20 Europe, I was happily surprised by at least one session that seemed capable of delivering on that promise. It was a fireside chat between Jeff Tijssen, Global Head of Fintech at Bain & Company and TS Anil, the CEO of Monzo, one of the UK-based challenger banks.

I witnessed a rare case study of a financial institution that designed itself to be different, not only in how it talks, but in how it works. At our own conference on May 22, I already heard from Revolut how the neobank business is maturing, and Monzo simply confirmed this.

Listening to CEO TS Anil’s recent reflections, it is clear that Monzo is not merely building better features; it is redefining what it means to be a bank. For the incumbents, it poses a subtle yet significant challenge: what if genuine transformation does not commence with technology or efficiency, but with empathy?

It was a conversation that resonated 100% with my own book “A New Ethos in Banking – Embracing Values and Ethics for a Meaningful Transformation”.

Designing for Financial Anxiety, Not Financial Archetypes

At the core of Monzo’s purpose is a deceptively simple insight: most people have a troubled, even avoidant, relationship with money. Money is a very emotional concept and often not the most positive one. We talk about it in a rational way, but behave with it in a very irrational one. This cuts across wealth brackets and demographics. It’s not a lack of access; it’s a lack of clarity, comfort, and control.

Monzo’s entire business is shaped around this reality. Instead of simply offering financial products or selling financial services, they dig deeper: they’re tackling financial anxiety. That is the core of their model, as I understand it.

Where traditional banks often monetise inertia and complexity, Monzo builds tools that encourage financial clarity, even if they don’t directly drive revenue. That includes:

• The Gambling Block, a self-imposed control mechanism for vulnerable customers, is now used by over 600,000 people.
• The Caller Verification Tool is an in-app feature that helps prevent impersonation scams.
• An investment platform that allows users to start from just £1, designed not for high-net-worth clients but for the curious and cautious.

The success of this development is now often copied by other banks, proving that Monzo still leads in terms of innovation, not for the sake of innovation, but to solve very concrete problems that were not considered to be solved.

TS Anil: “A feature can be copied, and it's flattering when someone takes the feature that we've built and copies it, making it available to their customers. One of the things we set out to do was raise the standards for the whole industry.”

Monzo’s product velocity is widely admired, but what’s often missed is the invisible foundation behind it: a proprietary tech stack, built from the ground up. Their systems can serve tens of millions of users without re-architecture. In fact, during service outages that hit traditional providers, Monzo’s infrastructure remained fully operational thanks to their "Stand-In" system, an elegant demonstration of reliability as a product feature.

Too often, trust is treated as a branding exercise. At Monzo, they found the balance in what I call the Rhetoric Triangle, as described in my book: ethos, pathos, and logos.

Profitability with Principles

Monzo’s model is not built on the back of one profitable product or pricing gimmick. Instead, it's a diversified ecosystem: customers can spend, borrow, save, invest, and insure, all in one place. This breadth creates depth of engagement, which in turn drives growth. Where most banks focus on selling a few feature-rich products, Monzo seems to be taking the long-term financial well-being of its customers in mind, knowing that this will drive future profitability.

Two-thirds of their customer acquisition comes through word of mouth: a reflection of both customer satisfaction and emotional loyalty. That loyalty translates to a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of over +70, more than double the industry average.

Crucially, the cost-to-serve for this model is sufficiently low that engagement does not act as a profitability filter; rather, it enhances relationships.

TS Anil: “In legacy banks, engagement is also driven by this desire to find customers that you can make money off of because the bar of cost-to-serve is so high that you get to a place where only very highly engaged customers are actually contributing positively”.

The numbers support this approach:

• Revenue rose 48% year-on-year, reaching £1.2 billion.
• Customer count increased 25% to 12.2 million.
• Customer deposits surged 48% to £16.6 billion ($22.5 billion).

After more than a decade in operation, Monzo continues to scale, now the seventh-largest bank in the UK. Their expansion into Europe, starting with Ireland, reflects a belief that the emotional and functional needs around money are universal, even if the regulations are not.

Integration, Not Just Aggregation

Monzo aims to be the single app for managing your entire financial life. While this vision isn’t uncommon, its implementation is. Instead of merely combining disparate services, they focus on integration: enabling connections between financial aspects and providing contextual advice beyond simple transactions. This approach prioritises coherence over mere feature parity, striving to create a complete experience that truly surpasses the total of its individual components.

After more than a decade in operation, Monzo continues to scale, now the seventh-largest bank in the UK. They’re not playing the short-term game. And they’re not asking for shortcuts. Their expansion into Europe, starting with Ireland, reflects a belief that the emotional and functional needs around money are universal, even if the regulations are not.

A Provocation for the Industry

As TS Anil put it: the real race is between two forces:

• Legacy institutions trying to master technology.
• Technology-led challengers learning the craft of banking.

His bet is on the latter. And when one listens to Monzo’s story, it’s not hard to see why.

The lesson here isn’t to copy Monzo’s features or design language. It’s to question our own assumptions: Are we solving real problems? Are we treating trust as infrastructure? Are we designing around the lives customers live, not just the products we sell?

The question is how to rethink the art of the possible, in favour of the customer.

Join us at The Banking Scene Art Night on November 17 in Brussels, for more stories and insights on "Reinventing the Art of The Possible" - secure your seat today!