Exclusive: Monese looking to close Lisbon and Berlin offices with layoffs across the company

via AltFi

Challenger banking app Monese is looking to close two of its European offices, AltFi can exclusively reveal, with reports of company-wide redundancies affecting “significant” numbers of staff.

Yesterday employees at Monese’s Berlin and Lisbon offices were informed of reorganisation plans which could include the closures of their offices.

A wider formal consultation process is also underway with staff across the company, including in its London headquarters and Tallin offices. 

Company insiders told AltFi they believe as many as 40 per cent of employees could be affected by the cuts, however no formal figure has been set.

Monese is understood to be taking the steps as part of a company-wide reorganisation around core technologies and its core markets of the UK, Germany and France.

Unlike other fintechs Monese is not furloughing staff. In some other industries the furlough process has come under fire as being misused to delay redundancies.

The fintech’s board and management team are said to be in agreement with the decisions, which also include a reduction in paid-for marketing in the fintech’s secondary markets.

Monese opened its Lisbon office in October 2018. According to LinkedIn Monese has around 30 staff in Lisbon, and fewer than 5 in Berlin.

A Monese spokesperson told AltFi: 

“It would be news if we were not making some changes as a result of the Covid-19 disruption. We cannot say what those changes will be in detail, nor how we will staff them, as we have to wait for a formal consultation process to take its proper course.”

“However, we are going to be focussing more of our resources on our core tech platform and banking infrastructure, and on our core European markets. This will allow us to better serve our current and prospective customers.”

“It follows that this will necessitate some changes to the organisation which will likely affect each of our locations one way or another. As would be expected we are consulting staff accordingly. It would be wrong to comment on the consultation process or what the results of the consultation process might be.”