Monument

Monument is a UK bank that does one thing: personal savings. It offers easy access savings accounts, fixed term deposits and a cash ISA, and more than 100,000 clients save with it¹. It is not a high street bank. There are no branches and no current accounts: Monument is app-only, so you open, manage and close your accounts entirely through the Monument mobile app².

Because it is built around savings rather than everyday banking, Monument works differently from a traditional bank in ways that matter before you open an account. Money can only move between your Monument account and one nominated personal UK bank account, your Linked Account, and you can have only one of those at a time². There are no joint savings accounts and no overdrafts². Deposits start at £10,000 for a new client opening the Easy Access Cash ISA, or £1 if you already bank with Monument, and £25,000 across other savings accounts¹.

Your money is protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) up to £120,000 per eligible person, and that limit applies across all the accounts you hold with Monument, not to each account separately².

What Monument offers: savings accounts and an ISA

Monument sells savings products only: easy access accounts, where you can take money out when you need it; fixed term deposits, where your money is locked away for a set period at a rate that does not change; and a cash ISA, where interest is paid free of UK income tax within your annual ISA allowance. Savings accounts across the market generally come in these shapes, ISAs, instant access and fixed term options, and Monument covers all three¹.

The Monument Easy Access Cash ISA is its named ISA product. It is a flexible ISA, which means you can withdraw money and put it back in the same tax year without losing that part of your annual ISA allowance¹. That flexibility matters if you need to dip into savings temporarily: with a flexible ISA, money you replace does not eat into the allowance you have left for the year.

There are rules around what the ISA will accept. Deposits can only be made by electronic payment from your Linked Account, or from another Monument savings account in your name, subject to that account's terms¹. Monument does not accept transfers into the ISA from Stocks & Shares ISAs, Junior ISAs, Innovative Finance ISAs or Lifetime ISAs¹. And if you pay in more than your annual ISA allowance, Monument returns the full payment to the account it came from, rather than keeping the excess².

Monument does not publish its rates on this page, and rates on savings accounts change often. Current rates, and the terms attached to each account, are shown in the Monument app and on its website before you open anything. For how savings accounts compare in general, see our guide to savings accounts, and for how ISAs and their allowances work, see our guide to ISAs.

Who can open a Monument account

Monument's accounts are personal savings accounts, and the entry requirements are set by the bank itself. The starting point is the minimum balance: £10,000 for the Easy Access Cash ISA if that is the only account you hold with Monument, and £25,000 for all other savings accounts, though you can spread that £25,000 across multiple accounts². New clients opening the cash ISA start from £10,000, or £1 if you already bank with Monument¹.

Beyond the money, the practical requirement is a UK bank account of your own. When you open a savings account, Monument asks for the sort code and account number of a personal UK bank account in your name, which becomes your Linked Account². For Monument's purposes, UK means England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and does not include the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man¹. E-money accounts may be accepted in certain circumstances, but the default is a personal UK bank account².

There are also things Monument does not offer, which shape who it suits. It does not offer joint savings accounts, so couples looking to save together in one account cannot do it here². It does not offer overdrafts, because its accounts are designed for personal savings rather than day-to-day spending². And it does not accept cheques, so anyone whose income arrives by cheque cannot pay it in². In practice, Monument tends to suit someone who already has a UK bank account, has a lump sum to save, and is comfortable managing money through a mobile app rather than a branch or desktop site.

The Linked Account: how money goes in and out

Every Monument account is tied to one external account: your Linked Account. This is a personal UK bank account in your name, which you provide when you open your Monument account¹. It is the doorway for everything: deposits come from it, and withdrawals go back to it.

Deposits into the Easy Access Cash ISA, for example, can only be made by electronic payment from your Linked Account, or from another Monument savings account in your name, subject to the terms of that account¹. You cannot pay in cash, and you cannot pay in cheques: Monument confirms plainly that you cannot pay a cheque into your Monument account². Everything moves by bank transfer.

On the way out, the same rule applies in reverse. Withdrawals are made through the Monument app, and you can withdraw up to £150,000 per day per account². The money goes back to your Linked Account, not to any other destination. You can only have one Linked Account at any one time, which Monument says is for security reasons². If you change your main bank account, that is a change you would need to make with Monument rather than simply sending money from somewhere new.

This structure is a security feature as much as a limitation. Because money can only ever return to a bank account in your own name that Monument verified when you opened the account, there is no way for a fraudster to talk you into sending your savings to a third party's account through the normal withdrawal process. The trade-off is convenience: if you want to move money to a different bank of yours, you first withdraw to the Linked Account and then move it on.

Closing an account follows the same pattern. At the moment, you can only close an Easy Access Savings account or a Limited Access Saver in the app; other accounts are closed by contacting Monument².

Fixed Term Accounts: a set rate for a set term

Monument's Fixed Term Deposit accounts work on a simple principle: the interest rate is fixed and will not change once you have opened the account². That is the whole point of a fixed term deposit. You know what you are getting, and movements in the wider market, up or down, do not affect the rate you locked in.

The trade-off is access. Money in a fixed term account is committed for the term, so it does not suit savings you may need at short notice. How interest is paid depends on the length of the term: for Fixed Term Deposit accounts of 12 months or less, interest is paid at maturity, meaning you receive it when the account ends rather than along the way². Longer terms may pay interest differently, and the terms of each account set this out before you open it.

Fixed term deposits tend to suit someone with a lump sum they are confident they will not need for the period of the term, who values certainty about the return over the flexibility of easy access. If you might need the money earlier, an easy access account or the cash ISA gives you that flexibility instead, and Monument offers both. Current rates and available terms are shown in the Monument app and on its website, and our guide to savings accounts explains how fixed term accounts compare with other types in general.

Banking with Monument through the app

Monument is an app-only bank, meaning you can only access your account through the Monument mobile app². There is no branch network, no counter service and no web browser banking: the app is the bank. You open and manage your accounts through it, including the Easy Access Cash ISA¹.

This shapes the whole experience of using Monument. Everything happens in one place: opening an account, making deposits and withdrawals, checking balances, and closing an Easy Access Savings or Limited Access Saver account². The £150,000 per day per account withdrawal limit applies to withdrawals made via the app².

The practical implication is that you need a smartphone you are comfortable using, and you need it to be the one registered to your Monument account. If you lose your phone or change numbers, regaining access is a process you would go through with Monument's client service team rather than a branch visit. For someone who does their banking on a phone already, nothing about this is unusual; for someone who prefers a desktop site, a branch or paper statements, Monument is not set up for that.

Customer service: a UK-based team by app or phone

Monument describes its offering as including UK-based client service, alongside a range of what it calls Lifestyle services, and says more than 100,000 clients save with it¹. Support is available through the app and by phone, and the current phone number and opening hours are shown in the Monument app and on its website.

Because Monument is app-only, the app is usually the first place to go with a question about your account: it is where your account details live, where withdrawals are made, and where certain accounts are closed². For anything the app cannot resolve, the client service team handles it. Monument does not publish its phone hours in the material here, so check its website or app for when the team is available before calling.

If your question is about savings in general rather than your Monument account specifically, free and impartial help exists outside the bank. MoneyHelper, the government-backed money guidance service, covers savings, ISAs and scams, and can be reached online; it is a useful counterweight to a bank's own information because it does not sell anything⁴.

Fraud and scams: how reimbursement works

Monument's Linked Account structure gives its accounts a built-in protection: withdrawals can only go back to your own verified UK bank account². That removes one common route by which scam losses happen, where a victim is persuaded to transfer savings to an account controlled by a criminal. But no structure stops every scam, so it is worth knowing how the wider rules work.

If you are tricked into authorising a payment to a fraudster, an authorised push payment (APP) scam, the rules on reimbursement have applied since 7 October 2024. Under these rules, payment providers can be required to reimburse victims, and the Payment Systems Regulator publishes data on how the requirement is working. In the first three months of the policy, the reimbursement rate was revised up to 87%⁵. In Q1 2026, the percentage of claims value reimbursed returned to 89%, and reimbursement value reached £72.6 million⁵. The regulator has also set out its approach to multi-step fraud cases, where a scam unfolds across several payments⁶, and has extended the requirements to cover APP fraud committed over the CHAPS payment system⁷.

The rules have exclusions. Your payment provider may not reimburse you if one or more of the following applies: the payment was international, a card payment, a cryptocurrency transfer, or to an account you control; the dispute is civil rather than fraud; the payment was sent or received by a credit union, municipal bank or national savings bank; the fraud was first-party fraud or gross negligence; the payment was made before 7 October 2024; or you claim more than 13 months after the last payment⁸.

Two warnings are worth having in mind alongside the rules. First, beware recovery scams: after a fraud, scammers may promise to recover your stolen money for a fee, but they cannot, and any money you pay them is lost too⁹. Second, treat any unexpected contact asking you to move money as a scam, whoever it claims to be from. Genuine organisations do not do this: the Money and Pensions Service states it has never, and will never, turn up to your home or contact you out of the blue by phone, WhatsApp, email or text⁴, and the Insolvency Service similarly does not randomly contact people to request money¹⁰. Warning signs of a scam include requests for bank details, urgency, grammatical mistakes, and links or contact details that do not look right¹¹. Our guide to scams and fraud covers the common types in detail.

Making a complaint to Monument

If something goes wrong, the first step is always to complain to Monument itself. The general rule for financial complaints is to make a formal complaint to the company first, and Monument's client service team, through the app or by phone, is the place to start¹². Set out what happened, what you lost, and what you want the bank to do about it, and keep a record of what you sent and when.

Monument then has a set period to investigate and respond. The standard timescale used across financial services is eight weeks: if the firm does not send you a final response letter within eight weeks, or you are unhappy with its response, you can bring the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service¹². The ombudsman assigns a case handler, may ask you for more information, and reaches an independent decision¹³.

Complaints about payment services are not unusual across the industry: the Financial Ombudsman's quarterly data for Q1 2026/27 records 50 complaints opened about payment instruments¹⁵. If your complaint involves a fraud marker against your name, the ombudsman can also consider that: where it thinks you lost money because of a fraud marker, it will tell the financial business to put things right and pay compensation for distress or inconvenience¹⁶.

When Monument does not resolve your complaint

If Monument does not uphold your complaint, or does not acknowledge it, you can escalate it to the Financial Ombudsman Service¹⁷. The ombudsman is free to use and independent of the bank. Its powers go beyond simply agreeing or disagreeing with Monument: it can tell the bank to put things right, and it may tell it to pay compensation for any distress or inconvenience it caused¹⁸.

The process is the same one described above: you complain to Monument first, and if you receive no final response letter within eight weeks, or you disagree with the response you get, you bring the complaint to the ombudsman using its complaint form¹². You do not need a claims management company to do this; the ombudsman's form is designed for consumers, and using a claims company typically means sharing a share of any redress with it.

If the complaint is about something outside the ombudsman's remit, other routes exist. Complaints about how an organisation handled your personal information go first to that organisation as a data protection complaint and then to the Information Commissioner's Office. But for a complaint about a savings account, an ISA, a withdrawal or a scam reimbursement decision, the Financial Ombudsman Service is the body that covers Monument, and the Payment Systems Regulator also provides information for consumers on how it helps with payment issues¹⁴. Our guide to consumer protection sets out the full landscape of who regulates what.

FSCS protection: how the limit applies across your Monument accounts

Money held with Monument is protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme up to £120,000². FSCS is the UK's statutory deposit protection scheme, and it protects up to £120,000 in total across all the accounts you hold with a bank, either in your name or where you are listed as the beneficiary, per banking group³. It applies automatically: you do not apply for it, and it costs nothing.

The detail that matters with a bank like Monument, where you might hold several accounts, is that the limit is per person per bank, not per account. FSCS states this directly: the limit applies to individuals and companies, not accounts¹⁹. So if you hold an Easy Access Cash ISA, an easy access savings account and a fixed term deposit, all with Monument, the balances add together and the £120,000 limit covers the total³. Someone with £80,000 in one Monument account and £60,000 in another has £140,000 with the bank, and £20,000 of it sits above the protection limit.

The limit is £120,000 per eligible person, per bank, building society or credit union²⁰. Joint accounts are also eligible for FSCS protection up to the same limit of £120,000 per eligible person, so two people named on a joint account each have their own £120,000 allowance²². Where you have an individual account and a joint account within the same banking group, the £120,000 compensation limit applies across all these accounts, not to each separate account²⁰. Monument does not offer joint savings accounts², but the rule matters if you hold accounts with Monument in your own name and joint accounts elsewhere in the same banking group.

There is one extension worth knowing. FSCS can protect temporary high balances of up to £1.4 million for six months, where the money comes from a qualifying life event such as a house sale, an inheritance or a divorce settlement²⁰. This recognises that a lump sum landing in your account can push you over £120,000 for a short period while you decide what to do with it. If you are moving a large sum to Monument, it is worth checking how your total balances across the bank sit against the limit, and you can use FSCS's own protection checker to confirm a bank is covered²⁰. Our guide to consumer protection explains FSCS and the other safeguards in UK financial services more fully.