What's up you guys, sasha here now this morning, monzo have announced their new monzo premium card, so i thought i'd go and have a look and i'd. Tell you exactly what i think about it. I'd give you a detailed review of the various benefits that the card has as a disclaimer. I do not have one of these cards.

I, for some unknown reason, was not given one of these before the launch, and i wasn't informed. The launch was happening, and i haven't had the time to go and apply for the card to get my hands on it. But i'll give you my very honest feedback and my opinion as to whether it's worth it, whether it isn't worth it and how it compares to other similar products in the market. Let's dive right in now, you might be thinking didn't they do exactly this.

Just a few months ago, no well, they did, but they didn't what they did release is they released the monzo plus account. I did review this, i'm going to put the link in the description below if you're interested in that account. That is a very different account. It offers far less features, it also costs less money per month.

So this is a sort of third tier product, they have the basic account and they have the monzo plus account, which is a fiverr a month. And then this premium account is 15 pounds a month which places it in line with some other bank accounts that are currently available on the open market from the more traditional high street banks we'll get to that right towards the end of this review now, really quickly. What is the main feature that they advertise? What is the most obvious in your face? Part of the advertising campaign? Yeah the card is made of metal yeah. So if you are a 21 year old influencer - and you want to show off to your 37 followers on instagram, that you have a metal card - and you know for some reason - you don't want to get the revolut one.

You can go and get yourself a monza. One all you have to do is pay 15 pounds a month, that's 180 pounds a year for the privilege of carrying not just a regular plastic credit card, but one made of a single piece of sheet steel, which is cut into the shape of the card. I mean genuinely, there isn't any benefit to it whatsoever. The likelihood is that metal card will be more damaging to whatever wallet or thing that you carry your cards in also because it is made of a magnetic type of metal.

This will affect some of the nfc reader types that exist out there because of the way they interact anyway. I just don't really understand the appeal other than for people who like to show off that they are paying for a card instead of just not paying the monthly fee and having a plastic one instead. But let's let that slide. Let's talk about the actual benefits and the pros and cons of the product and i'll try to simplify down the release that they released.

I went and read through it. I went read through all the terms conditions of the various parts of this product. To make sure i understood exactly what it does. It's quite lengthy, there's quite a lot in there, but in short, there are two main benefits.

There are two main benefits and a subset of much smaller benefits that i'm going to come to in a little bit later. The first benefit that they talk about is the phone insurance. It costs 97. Pounds is provided by a third party, but the terms of this policy are actually really pretty good.

It covers you for theft. It covers you for accidental damage. It covers you for a broken screen. If you happen to do it covers for any device breakdown, including software related.

It also covers you for 24 hours worth of unauthorized calls which are logged from the moment that you lose your phone until 24 hours from when you realize that you've lost your phone, which means you have somewhat over 24 hours. You know the 24 hours plus the time between when you lose it and when you realize that you've lost it to go and log that which, which is good. It is probably one of the better policies out there in terms of it's not restricted to any specific handset. It doesn't have to be a relatively new handset.

It doesn't place any of those restrictions and it's quite generous on the terms you get up to two claims. In any 12-month window, which is quite substantial for any regular user, it limits it to only your handsets, which is quite common and limits the cost of price to monzo. It also covers up to 300 pounds worth of accessories, which is pretty neat. So if in the process of say breaking your phone or losing your phone or whatever, you also happen to lose the case that it's in and the headphones that were very expensive when you bought them, those will also be covered, which is which is pretty good.

There is a 75 pound xs, and the one thing to note is this only covers mobile phones, it doesn't cover any tablets or any other portable computing devices. You also need to ensure, unlike with some other policies, that you have two things in order to be able to make a claim one is you need to log down the imei number of the device, because, if it's lost, you will need that to be able to Claim - and the second is you have to proof purchase, which means you have to have an invoice or a receipt showing that you purchase this phone it all. You need to have some other document which states that you have been owning, that phone for a period of time and using it say on your network now this is to prevent fraud. It's very very clearly stated, and i don't really have any issue with that.

In fact, this policy is pretty good value when i was trying to do a comparison trying to find similar policies that are available on the open market. The equivalent policies typically cost something like 120 pounds, so they're, probably under egging. The actual value of this. In terms of the value to somebody who actually wants one of these policies now, the second insurance of the offer is a worldwide family travel insurance.

It's with axa and they're saying that it's worth up to 159 pounds per year. It's actually again a really good policy. It covers you for 10 million pounds of medical costs. It covers you for up to 750 pounds of valuables.

During your travels, it covers you for up to 5 000 pounds in cancellation fees, uh in case something happens and your holiday has to be cancelled. It has a 50 pound access. It has some other things like if your holiday is cancelled or you choose not to go, because the foreign office advice on the status of say, coronavirus and the country changes that won't be covered, but that is very standard these days, that is very common across most Of these types of travel, insurance policies and generally, that is a really good policy. It covers your family entirely.

It covers things like winter sports and lots of other sports activities, which usually add quite a hefty premium of policies. So if you want a travel policy, this is a really good deal again. I went to try to find similar policies out there. How much would they cost in the open market if you were to buy them and they were in a very comparable sense? Probably in 180 to 200 pound territory and actually i'll put it up right here when i went and compared axa itself going direct the equivalent policy with very very similar terms, actually cost over 200 pounds.

So again, if you're wanting it for that policy, you're, probably getting more value than that, actually even telling you. Let me just cover some of the other perks the product has and then we'll get to the bit. Where i talk about my opinion on it and how it compares to similar products in the market now, one perk that they put quite prominently is the 1.5 interest variable that is paid on balances of up to 2 000 pounds. Now.

This is outside of your regular savings parts. This is just on any balance that you hold in just regular transactional parts or, in the actual main part of your account, but the catch is it's only up to two thousand pounds of balance. That means, even if your balance is more than two thousand pounds for the entire duration of the year, you're only going to be getting 30 pounds worth of value from that and, if you're, more regular user, your balance kind of goes up and down you're going to Be getting quite a bit below that the second, the small perks, is an extension of the amount you can withdraw without having to pay fees when you travel abroad. Now, with this product, you can withdraw as much as 600 pounds in cash without having to pay fees on the basic free account.

That limit is just 200 pounds per 30 days, which is pretty good because, if you're going on a say, a two-week holiday to a destination which uses quite a lot of cash, then the 200 pounds for a family might not be quite enough. Even if you're paying with card for most things, 600 pounds will probably cover you for most types of holidays for the majority of cash that you'll need, so that's quite good, except for the fact that, in terms of the actual amount of value you're getting from it, It's not a huge amount, it's even if you use it to the max on your say, one big holiday a year. That's going to give you 12 pounds value. If you're going twice it's going to get twice as much value, because the 200 pounds is already free.

So you're only getting the value on the next 400 above it and that's only if you get the maximum amount of cash out so to most people i would say: the value here is probably under 10 pounds per year. There's a bunch of other perks here, i'm not going to go through them in detail, because the perks listed below are actually really not useful to, i would say, 95 percent of the people using it there's discounted airport lounge from lounge key. So not free not like some of the worst lounges, but ones where you're still paying 24 pounds per person to be able to access lounges, and that is some form of a benefit. I honestly don't see any value in there whatsoever.

I don't think anybody would actually use it. Other products like they allow you now to add. Other bank accounts and credit cards like american express to your monzo account, so you can see all of them within the same account. That's part of the new open banking psd2 functionality that all banks and all financial service providers are signing up to it really isn't innovative.

It really isn't groundbreaking in the most important thing is: why would you want monza to have access to all of these other accounts? Just so that they can learn from the data just so that they can then try to offer their own products instead of the products that you are currently using yourself anyway, um. I don't really see the benefit to the user very much at all, um. I don't see what the value in it is in terms of pounds. So again, i don't really think that's of any particular mention either.

The next perk of the list on this account is one that i'm really particularly not happy with the list. That is part of this paid account. You can get access to your transunion credit score, except for the fact that you can already get your transunion credit score for free from transunion, and this to me is a really big issue. There are laws existing in the uk and europe that explicitly prohibit the marketing of a paid service.

That is a bundle of different services where you are advertising a feature of that product. That is either a legal or regulatory requirement or something that genuinely has no actual monetary value, because it is already a free product out there. And in this case i don't know, i'm not a lawyer, but i am confused as to why you would advertise something as a benefit when the thing that you are advertising is already available directly for free to all the customers that are potentially going to be buying. This product, anyway, i'm going to move on from this.

You can tell me whether you agree disagree, there's a bunch of other perks on there, they're all kind of ported over from the plus account so they're the same as the things you get on. Plus you get custom spending categories, you get virtual cards, you get various shopping offers. If you like that kind of thing, you are able to do five free cash deposits per month, which is up to five pounds worth of value per month. If you go and make regular cash deposits, so in you, if that applies to you, that is great, but still that is a very expensive way of being able to access that cash.

So, anyway, what i did is i went and tossed it up the cost. So the 15 pounds a month card cost per month when you add it up for the year, will be 180 pounds, and when i did my valuation, i went and said well to me the minimum value, if you are actually taking this card out for the two Big things is 256 pounds, the maximum value, if you use all the other features, if you max your balance, so you get the maximum interest on it. If you get the 12 pound value from your one big holiday by drawing as much cash as possible, if you get those cash deposits, the maximum value is 303 pounds. So there's not much variation and you're talking somewhere, like the 260 270 value to most people.

If you place that value on those insurance policies, now that sounds kind of good, because you are actually getting value when i account for the fact that my estimate on the value of those insurance policies is higher than what monso is saying. I'm actually saying that i think the value is probably more than a 320 330 pounds va territory for the 180 pounds that you're paying, and that sounds quite good. That's actually a lot better than i thought when i was first starting looking through this and trying to make an assessment of it. But here is my big problem.

Here is my big problem with it and that is monzo's trying to position itself as the out there. The best the innovator, the challenger, the bank, that is trying to disrupt the market, but yet look at the other products that are available in the market that this is directly competing against. I found just three and i think, there's probably a lot more out there, which offer almost exactly the same proposition but actually offer a better version of it. Now.

The first one is the co-op everyday extra. It costs 15 pounds per month and it offers you the travel insurance with all the perks and bells and whistles. It also offers you the mobile phone insurance, but it also then offers you eu wide breakdown insurance. On top now it doesn't have custom spending categories or virtual cards or the free transunion score that is already free, but in terms of the real value items it actually adds an extra value item.

On top, that is actually quite useful to people who drive it is covered in the uk. It is also covered across europe. So if you have a breakdown, you will have that included now that 15 pound fee actually goes down to 10 pounds. If you satisfy some basic criteria like paying in over 800 pounds per month, setting up the direct debit and spending on the card on all your regular shopping and everything else and paying bills so basically they're offering the same two types of major benefits that this card Offers they also offer you the breakdown policy, but you're going to be paying either 15 pounds or less depending on how many boxes you take for the privilege? So actually, you are probably going to be paying less for having more features.

Let me cover another card nationwide. Are offering a an account where you're paying 13 pounds a month? You get exactly the same. Travel insurance benefits pretty much they're almost identical. Then you get eu wide breakdown cover and for the phone insurance you don't only get cover for your phone.

It's actually a family phone insurance policy so again you're getting considerably more value. So your children's phones or your partner's phone are also protected under the same policy and that only costs 13 pounds so again, nationwide are offering the same core type of account with the same core benefits where they actually offer you more and it costs less. Let me cover one more halifax: it costs 17 pounds, but again, just like the co-op one. If you satisfy certain criteria like paying into the account and some other things like that, which most people probably would that goes down by five pounds to just 12 pounds a month and again it offers you the same travel insurance.

It offers you breakdown cover in the uk. It also offers the home emergency cover, which again is a really nice extra feature in case something happens with your boiler or you get flooded or some other issue like that emerges again. This they offer exactly the same main perks, plus one other major perk and it's gon na cost, you 17 pounds or actually less than 15 pounds if you use it as your main bank account. So again, these three different types of accounts that i've just shown you offer the same main policies in terms of the mobile phone insurance and the worldwide family travel insurance, plus one other major perk for less money.

Now sure they don't give you the 1.5 interest, they don't give you some of the other perks, but the grand total of these perks to the average person is minuscule. The average person will not carry huge balances on this account because if they do have that much money, there are better places to invest it, which will pay you more than the 1.5 interest. That monza will pay you most people, don't really attribute any particular value to things that are already free or things that don't really have an intrinsic value associated with it. Like custom spending categories, sure some people will find it really valuable, but is that particular feature valuable enough for 15 pounds a month? I don't know now my my issue here is that, instead of innovating, instead of coming up with something really interesting after what happened with a monzo plus account after the massively negative year-end accounts that monzo had to release and the impact that that had this is the Latest move in trying to climb out of the hole or, as their own accountant said out, of a potential situation where they may not be able to continue trading, and the only thing that i can see them doing is basically taking a copy of what banks like Co-Op, halifax and even nationwide are offering to their customers, coupled with a metal card, to try to attract the younger crowd with a cool factor.

What i'm not seeing is anything that is in some way different in some way, interesting in some way, thinking a bit beyond where they are currently thinking or just actually satisfying genuine customer issues and general custom concerns. In the last few days, starling went and released a desktop version of their bank for retail customers. Previously, it was only open to business accounts, and that is really really helpful to people who are older to people who are doing larger transactions for people who like to manage their finances on their desktop and have access to their banking on there. That is an actual nice benefit on top of having the app, and it would be really nice if monzo was to follow suit and do exactly the same, because that would actually solve some customer issues that customers are having.

I don't really believe there are many customers sitting there going well. I've got this monso account. I really really wish that the one feature that it had was that the card would be made of metal, because then i would definitely get it now. Just before we complete this review, one really positive feature is they have moved the personal details of the card onto the back of the card? I'm not sure exactly how it looks in the back of the card.

I haven't actually seen a real-life example, yet as to whether it will be readable by those card scanners or not. We'll come to that when we come to that if ever. But that does make the card look nicer from the front for sure, but i'm not sure that that aesthetic pleasing is worth picking that account over any of these other accounts that basically offer you exactly the same thing now, if you agree or disagree with this review, I would love to hear your comments below. Please go and leave one if you enjoyed this review.

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So much for watching and i'll see you guys later. You.