Monzo Instant Access Savings – Empathy Mapping Summary

🧭 Design Task Overview

Selected Financial Platform: Mobile Banking Application

Product Name: Monzo – Instant Access Savings

Device Type: Smartphone

🔍 User Research

As outlined in the project brief, this exercise is focused on early-stage exploration — not full-scale research. To keep things lightweight, we used publicly available sources to gather initial insights into user behaviour, motivations, and pain points.

• User demographics were sourced from Monzo’s 2024 Annual Report, which highlights that the bank’s core audience consists of young, mobile-first adults aged 18–35, including freelancers, students, and salaried professionals who value convenience, transparency, and app-based money management.
• User behaviours and sentiments were drawn from naturally occurring discussions on Reddit (r/Monzo, r/UKPersonalFinance), where users openly discuss their experiences with Monzo’s Instant Access Savings feature. This allowed us to identify recurring patterns without needing to conduct primary research at this stage.

This empathy mapping activity is part of the early discovery process. The findings will guide future validation through more formal user interviews, surveys, or usability testing — depending on the direction of the next design phase.

🎯 Target Audience

• Age Group: 20–35
• Profile: Tech-savvy adults, students, freelancers, and young professionals
• Traits: Budget-conscious, app-first mindset, value-driven decision-making
• Location: Primarily urban/suburban UK

🔑 Insights Gathered from Reddit

• Convenience vs. Return
  • While some providers (e.g. Chip, Tandem) offer higher interest rates, users frequently prioritise Monzo’s ease of use and in-app experience over maximising savings returns.
• Trust & Safety
  • Users trust Monzo due to FSCS protection and clear, app-based support — despite concerns about the lack of physical branches.
• Tax Awareness
  • Many users consider the Personal Savings Allowance. High-rate taxpayers often recommend using ISAs over savings pots to avoid unnecessary taxation.
• Monzo Plus Evaluation
  • Upgrading to Monzo Plus is only considered worthwhile for users with over £12k saved. Some feel the value proposition doesn’t outweigh the subscription cost.
• Ease of Use & Control
  • Features like “lock” and “hide” are used to reduce impulse spending. Users also keep low current account balances and shift money as needed for security and control.
• Comparative Mindset
  • Monzo users regularly compare interest rates across providers but often choose not to switch — citing convenience, laziness, or loyalty as deciding factors.

🧠 Conclusion

This empathy map, built entirely from real Reddit commentary, uncovers key emotional and behavioural patterns. Monzo users are more motivated by clarity, simplicity, and trust than by interest rates alone. While this phase is exploratory, it’s already pointing toward valuable product and UX opportunities — especially around reducing friction, clarifying value propositions, and supporting financially savvy behaviours. These insights will be further validated through deeper user research in the next stage of the project.