Monzo has attracted most people who switched their accounts

Monzo bank attracted the biggest amount of account switchers in the final three months of last year according to the most recent data.

Monzo as a challenger bank lacks any branches. It offers accounts that can only be accessed using a mobile phone.

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According to per bank data covering Q4 2019 from the Current Account Switch Service (CASS), the biggest winner in the run-up to Christmas was, obviously, Monzo (with 20,843 net switches) followed by Nationwide (14,959), Lloyds (13,243) and Starling Bank (9,247).

Overall, HSBC had the largest number of customers who joined in the quarter (44,321), but it also had the highest figure of those who left at 39,715. This meant it had a net gain of just 4,606.

The figures from Pay.UK which owns and runs the Current Account Switch Service (CASS), revealed that more than 6.6 million switches have taken place since the scheme launched in 2013.

Andrew Hagger, industry expert and founder of personal finance site Moneycomms, suggested: “This increase in people moving accounts will have been fuelled by the banks announcing massive hikes their overdraft charges.”

“The figures for the first part of 2020 will make interesting reading and show which banks have suffered the most for charging rates of up to 49.9 percent for agreed overdrafts,” he added.

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Before October 19′, Monzo had more than 3 million customers. But the problem was to convince customers who downloaded the app to use it as their primary bank account.

Nobody knows what will be the COVID-19 lockdown impact on account switching. What we know is that RBS and NatWest already removed their £175 switching incentives. This way the market is likely to offer fewer perks for deal-hunters.

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