Monzo posted record results this year: £87.3m in pre-tax profit, up 44%. At the June all-hands, staff asked an obvious question. If profits are up, why are pay rises down? The company's answer was that it is investing in growth. What that answer left out is that it is not investing in the people who make that growth happen.

This is the case Monzo workers organising with UTAW are now putting to their colleagues, and the reason they are pushing for union recognition.

Monzo is not short of money

The numbers do not describe a company that cannot afford to pay its staff fairly. £87.3m in pre-tax profit, up 44% on the year. More than £300,000 a month spent on AI suppliers.

Against that backdrop, Monzo cut the pay budget from 6% to 5%, and spread it across more people. The result is that most staff are taking a real-terms pay cut, with RPI inflation running at around 3%.

The performance matrix tells the story. Across most ratings, from "Does Not Meet" through "Meets", the real pay increases range from -3% to low single digits. Only those rated "Exceeds" or "Greatly Exceeds", and sitting at the right point in their band, see anything that keeps pace with inflation.

A few people did very well

While most staff absorb a real-terms cut, the picture at the top is different. The highest-compensated director took home £3.5m in 2026, roughly 140 times what Monzo's lowest-compensated colleagues took home. The year before, that figure was nearly £12m, around 490 times the lowest-compensated worker.

Nine people were paid over €1m: six between €1m and €1.5m, two between €3.5m and €4m, and one between €5m and €6m.

No one is 140 times, let alone 490 times, more valuable or productive than the person sitting next to them.

There is more in this round than Monzo led with

Beyond the headline budget cut, several things were buried in the detail of this pay round.

• Pay "rises" often came with strings attached. 

• Transparency is eroding. 

• Monzo is fitting performance to a curve, despite saying otherwise.

• Share options that staff were due have been withdrawn. 

• The pay bands disadvantage tenured staff. 

None of this was negotiated. It was decided and handed down.

That is the thing collective organising changes. With union recognition, Monzo would have to sit down and negotiate pay and conditions, rather than simply announce them. And it works. Mitie workers recently won 22.5% rises after unionising. Santander workers won around 6% pay increases in 2024.

To Monzonauts reading this

The only thing standing in the way is numbers. UTAW has members at Monzo. It does not yet have enough of you active and making sure your colleagues are union members too. To negotiate with Monzo we need a solid majority of us unionised and pulling in the same direction. Alone, we have little power. When we stand together, management have to listen to us.

This week, while people are angry and paying attention, there are three things you can do.

1. Talk to the people around you, and send them utaw.tech/join.

2. Compare notes. If you are comfortable, share your rating, your spot in the band and your percentage increase. This is how patterns get proven.

3. Come to UTAW organiser training. It is about how to have these conversations and convince colleagues to join along with other important information around unionising (you can sign up to this by joining UTAWs Discord server which will be linked in your welcome email when you join).

Thousands of Monzonauts are worse off this round. You are not imagining it, and you are not on your own.

Help us make Monzo work for everyone.

— UTAW @ Monzo