Monzo taps Google Cloud to build integrated data analytics hub

By Gloria Methri

Monzo has collaborated with Google Cloud to build and shape a data analytics hub that can help it grow with its customers and create better customer experiences.

Monzo has been working with Google Cloud since it was founded in 2015. The bank is multi-cloud, and Google Cloud has been integral in building its data analysis hub. It helps provide the bank with data that can empower all its teams to get insights that can drive better business decisions. BigQuery, for example, is a serverless and cost-effective enterprise data warehouse that is helping Monzo store, access, and utilize data.

“We generate a lot of data on our back end and also on our front end from our systems, services, and our customers using the app,” said Suhail Patel, Senior Staff Engineer at Monzo.  “We use that in a multitude of ways, for example, to provide better customer support by sharing insights with customers about how they’re spending their money.”

“We empower all of our engineers and technical staff with BigQuery data across the organization,” Patel added. We leverage BigQuery’s scale and capabilities to run complex pipelines and data modelling to surface detailed customer and business insights.”

Monzo also uses Looker to access, analyze, and act on the most up-to-date multiple-terabyte data sets in minutes, and it’s helping the bank get access to a wide range of business insights. Whether it’s helping track key goals for the bank’s diversity and inclusion program or tracking profitability, all this data is being served on top of BigQuery. This aggregated data is then made accessible across the bank.

The bank has nearly 19 petabytes of data in BigQuery and more than 2,000 data models across its BigQuery estate. The internal and external insights Monzo gets from BigQuery also allow the bank to develop its customer-facing features, such as how it provides lending facilities to customers.

With all this data, Monzo can build powerful machine learning (ML) models to improve its services, such as protecting customers from fraudsters.

As Monzo continues to grow, the bank is using ML to develop its new experimental customer demand forecasting system. To train its ML models, the bank analyzes data sets like its support help articles on BigQuery using Vertex AI. This way, the bank can test, build, and monitor ML models.

Monzo also worked closely with Google Cloud and the banking regulators to build a disaster recovery program in which its data is continuously synced between another cloud platform and Google Cloud. This allows Monzo to flip a switch and provide all its important business services within seconds.