Sujata Bhatia, COO of Monzo Bank on - Navigating the Pandemic; How She Thinks of Competition; Monzo’s OKR process; Diversity in Fintech.

This is the last in my March Women’s Series and I am delighted to finish the series with Sujata Bhatia, Chief Operating Officer of neobank, Monzo. Few people need an introduction to Monzo, which was an early market leader in the digital banking space and today has close to 5 million customers. Prior to Monzo, Sujata joined Monzo in early 2020 and prior to that spent almost 16 years at American Express. In this episode, I talk to her about her early days at Monzo and how she navigated the turbulent times at Monzo, and her advice for other startups. Some great insights on how to keep the morale up, how to focus the teams during uncertainty, and Monzo’s framework for OKRs
  • [01:10] - What did you do in your first 30, 60, 90 days of joining Monzo given the timing of your joining (May 2020)
  • [07:42] - How did you navigate the pandemic? What are some lessons learnt?
  • [11:18] - How did you maintain the morale of the people in these turbulent times?
  • [15:30] - Is there anything you would do differently if you had to do it again?
  • [16:23] - How do you balance the need for structure with the need for agility and innovation?
  • [18:45] - How do you hire for someone with the right balance of agility and structure?
  • [20:42] - How do you define a path for success at Monzo?
  • [24:16] - Why expand in the US knowing it is very competitive? Why not other emerging markets?
  • [26:33] - How do you prioritize the conflicting goals of revenues, profits, market share and wallet share? 
  • [27:57] - Monzo’s framework or OKRs
  • [30:54] - How can we change impact diversity in fintech sector?

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