Monese Credit Builder is the latest offering from fintechs looking to help customers improve their credit rating by paying into a \u201creverse loan\u201d. The service costs 3 times more than its main rival, LOQBOX, so what do you get for your money?<\/p>
Monese Credit Builder is a cross between a savings account and a loan, and is designed to help you improve your credit score. Like LOQBOX, it does this by reporting monthly payments \u2013 that get deposited in a \u201clocked\u201d savings account \u2013 to the credit reference agencies, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, as regular repayments on a loan.<\/p>
You choose the amount you can pay, between \u00a330 - \u00a3100 per month. Monese multiplies this amount by 12 and locks that amount away for you in a \u201cCredit Builder pot\u201d, to be unlocked once you\u2019ve made your last (12th) repayment.<\/p>
As long as you make all your payments in full and on time (along with the monthly fee), by the end of the year you\u2019ll have 12 months of \u201cpositive payment behaviour\u201d recorded by the credit reference agencies, and between \u00a3360 and \u00a31,200 saved up and ready to spend.<\/p>
You can cancel your payments before the end of the 12 months and get back the money you\u2019ve paid in (minus the monthly fee: see below) but Monese warns that you\u2019re less likely to see an improvement in your credit score if you do this.<\/p>
Unlike LOQBOX, which is free (as long as you keep your savings in a bank account with one of their partners; it costs \u00a330 to transfer it to a different account) Monese costs \u00a32.50 per month. You\u2019ll need to pay that fee on top of your monthly payments into your Credit Builder pot.<\/p>
Monese is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, but it\u2019s not a bank. The money you pay into your Credit Builder pot won\u2019t be protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme<\/a>, but by a process called \u201csafeguarding\u201d whereby your funds are stored in a separate account that Monese can\u2019t touch.<\/p> Once you\u2019ve made 4 or more repayments into your Credit Builder pot, you become eligible for an extra feature called Monese Boost, which involves financing eligible transactions from your Monese account, up to an available credit limit, and repaying them over 3, 6 or 12 months. Monese then reports these repayments to the credit reference agencies.<\/p> Monese Credit Builder also offers a \u201ccredit health check\u201d service to help you identify any factors that may be affecting your credit score.<\/p> Credit Builder is a feature of Monese, a mobile app alternative to mainstream banks.<\/p> Designed to help those who struggle to access credit or have little or no credit history, Monese Credit Builder is available to all Monese UK registered account holders aged 18-75.<\/p> If you already have a Monese account and you\u2019re eligible for the Credit Builder, you\u2019ll see the option under the Explore section in your Monese app. To open a Monese account, visit the website or download the app.<\/p> Monese Credit Builder is a new product and so there are no customer reviews available yet. As a financial services provider, Monese has a Trustpilot rating of 4 out of 5 stars, based on over 2,000 customer reviews. The negative reviews are mostly from customers unhappy that their account has been closed or that their access has been blocked.<\/p> The strongest benefit of this particular product might be the way it integrates with Monese accounts, so existing Monese customers can start using Credit Builder easily in the app and take advantage of the Monese Boost feature once they\u2019re 4 months into their repayments.<\/p> However, the monthly fee of \u00a32.50 does make this product more than 3x more expensive than its competitor LOQBOX over the course of a year. As Monese Credit Builder is so new to the market, it remains to be seen whether it will provide its users with 3x the value. But if you already have a Monese account and you want to build a good credit score and some savings at the same time, this could be a decent option.<\/p> As ever with this type of product, a word of warning: only sign up to \u2018repay\u2019 an amount you\u2019re confident you can find every month, a if you miss a payment or make it late you could end up damaging your credit score even further, which in turn will affect your ability to borrow at competitive interest rates, or at all, in the future.<\/p>Benefits and features<\/h3>
Who is behind Monese Credit Builder?<\/h3>
Pros and cons of Monese Credit Builder<\/h3>
Pros<\/h4>\n
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Cons<\/h4>\n
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Who is eligible?<\/h3>
How to apply<\/h3>
Monese customer reviews<\/h3>
Alternatives to Monese Credit Builder<\/h3>
The verdict: is Monese Credit Builder any good?<\/h3>