Gambling blocks benefits to customers

Last year, we built a feature to allow our customers to self-exclude from gambling. We listened to our community’s ideas and feedback for this, and consulted with a range of charities that support people with gambling addictions.

While we spent some time planning and gathering feedback, the actual block was mostly put together in a single day, with the combined efforts of a number of people across Monzo – including engineers, designers and our security team. It was amazing for me to watch it unfold; my background is talking therapy for addictions, so watching everyone talk about code, design, and user experience to help people like my former clients was so beautiful!

I’d like to tell you how it works to begin with, and then give you a couple of case studies (with names and details changed to protect customers’ privacy) to show you how it’s benefited our customers’ lives.

How it works

Customers can activate the block by switching it on in the app, or by reaching out to someone in our customer support team to enable it for them. Our customer support team are trained to be able to tell customers more about how it works, help them switch it on, and point them to other sources of support and information.

When the feature is on, we’ll block any payments they try to make to gambling merchants using their Monzo account, both online and in person.

We know that the decision to gamble can often be an impulsive one. So we ask customers to make some extra effort if they want to remove the restrictions.  

The block works by looking for the merchant category codes we can see when customers buy something with their Monzo account. These codes help us identify the type of merchant our customers are paying, and we use these to sort their spending into categories, like Bills or Eating Out, or for other features. We’ve put together a list of these codes which identify gambling merchants, and then, when the feature’s turned on, we’ll do our best to block any payments customers try to make to those merchants.

To turn off the block, they’ll need to talk to someone in our customer support team first. We might use that conversation to ask them questions like, “Has your situation changed since you first switched on the restrictions?” to help them think through their reasons for turning it off.

If they decide that they do want to turn off the block, we’ll require them to wait 48 hours before they can switch it off from the app themselves.

The idea is that this added ‘friction’ gives them a little time and space to work out whether the decision to gamble again is the right one.

How many people are using the block?

The results we’ve seen so far are fascinating. At the time of writing, 48,271 customers have the block turned on. When we surveyed a sample of our customers using the block, about 15% of them said they’d enabled it because they were concerned about their gambling. The other 85% had turned it on because they felt it improved their security, or because they were exploring options in the app.

This means about 0.6% of our customer base is reporting a gambling problem and has activated the block. That’s roughly in line with the percentage of people who report a serious gambling problem nationally. Of course this figure could be higher as many customers understandably have fears around disclosing vulnerability to financial services, especially lenders. That’s a very interesting topic for another blog!

So who are these customers?

I wanted to hone in on two emblematic cases I’ve worked on recently. I’ve changed names and details to protect people’s privacy. I think they’re both good examples of how this can work for customers in practice.

Sharon’s Story

Our first customer – who we’ll call Sharon – activated the gambling block as soon as it was released, back in June 2018. Customer support first heard from her in August.  The first two times she contacted us to ask us to turn off the block, our staff said they could unblock it, but that if she waited 48 hours she could do it herself from within the app. We could see that she read it, but we had no response, so we closed the conversation. The block remained on both  times.

When she asked for the third time, our customer support operative brought it to my attention. They’d correctly identified that she might be struggling. They pointed out that she had quite a few blocked transactions to online gambling merchants during this period. We agreed that what we might be seeing here is the gambling block doing the job it was designed for. Another customer described the block as ‘limiting the damage I can do in my moments of madness’ to me recently. The urge to gamble, or to do anything else someone is addicted to, peaks at 20 minutes after it arrives, and then falls. It doesn’t last long, and so the block can give it the space it needs to pass.

This time, someone from the vulnerability team replied. We had an engaging conversation around her life as a problem gambler, and we thought of other ways to help her. We sought her permission to record her gambling problem, and we lowered the amount she could withdraw at an ATM and send to other accounts. This was all aimed at giving that urge the space it needs. She asked if she could speak to me or someone  else in my team if there were a next time she asked for the block to be off, and she asked for the cooldown to be a week, rather than 48 hours. We noted these on her account, and finally gave her some tailored signposting to further support.

She has since asked for the block to be turned off twice. The first time, our customer support operative sent a slightly different message, as they saw the note on her account. It was a gentle piece of extra friction designed to prompt her to remember that conversation and the protections we put in place then. She sent a brief response saying ‘it’s okay, thank you’ and the chat was ended. The second time she asked again, the vulnerability team again spoke to her and ended up signposting her to somewhere she hadn’t tried before.

If she ever insists that we turn it off, we will of course have to turn it off. But it’s interesting to see how much difference friction from both humans and technology can make.

Dylan’s Story

Often lenders or banks find out about circumstances that affect a customers finances when it’s too late. This can be particularly problematic for lenders (like us) who rely on digital communication methods and may not have spoken to a customer to pick up on any signs of potential vulnerability ahead of a lending decision being made.

To try and help with this, we released a Share With Us tool to allow our customers to disclose information relevant to the way they manage their finances, or their relationship with Monzo before any problems occurred.

A customer we will call “Dylan” used the Share With Us tool to let us know that he had a gambling problem. His message was frantic. He’d opened a new account with us because he’d heard of the gambling block and he was worried about being offered an overdraft.

Dylan was a young man who has had problems with gambling since he was about 14 years old and had later got into debt. He intended for this new account to become his main account because of the block. But he was worried about the overdraft – he said that his credit score was ‘artificially’ very high, because he’d taken out a variety of credit cards, payday loans, and personal loans to gamble – but his parents would always pay them off quickly, and had been doing so for nearly ten years. He wanted a fresh start, and didn’t trust himself not to use our overdraft.

Because of his disclosure we were able turn off lending for him, and we were able to have a meaningful conversation with him around gambling and how the block worked.

His story should alert us all to the importance of uncovering vulnerability and having productive conversations around it as soon as it can possibly be done. There are customers out there that do not disclose these problems, often because they don’t even think to or don’t think a lender would understand. Unfortunately this can often lead to problems down the line for both the lender and the customer.

This is why we try to release these features such as the gambling block or Share With Us – to help customers understand that there are things that banks or lenders can do to support them. We want to be a part of a customer’s journey to financial wellbeing and overall happiness – not the opposite!

Dan Clark, Vulnerable Customer Specialist, Monzo Bank