An Objective and Honest Review - Customer Onboarding Specialist Neo Financial Employee Review

I will try to be as constructive as possible. 1. The Pay - the most obvious and glaring. Really terrible pay and way below industry standards. Probably why most of the hires are international students who depend on their employment at Neo to stay in Canada, because frankly no Canadian citizen would actually accept such terrible pay. I get it, high growth companies need to show profit for their survival. I get it. But the reality is that it you don't pay employees properly, they won't give their 100 percent and either they will leave or you will fire them, which brings me to my next point.... 2. Constant churn - at least in the experience team, there has been a revolving door of specialists. There was The Great Layoffs of 2024, where 70 percent of specialists were let go in a span of 2 weeks. Those days, whenever I was called into a meeting for a one on one, I would grab by things from my desk preemptively in case I was shown the elevator. That created an environment of long lasting fear that lasts to this day. Low pay creates a viscious cycle of low effort, and termination. 3. Sycophantic culture - so, if you are chummy with senior leadership, you will be first in line when it comes to either promotions, or "bursts" (temporary reassignment to a better role but the pay remains same until you are actually hired for that role which doesn't always end up happening). This is really sad, but it is true. The louder and more visible you are on slack, the more credence you will receive. 4. Chasing tails - the funniest thing in my 2.5 years of Neo is this: when I started, there was the experience team, and the separate onboarding team. 6 months into it, management decided "you know what, this is inefficient. Oh I know! We will fuse the two teams together, and they will do both onboarding and experience tasks. Eureka!" This went on for a year, and then suddenly "You know what, it doesn't make sense for the onboarding and experience team to be fused, it's just not efficient. Oh I know! We will separate them so now there will be a team dedicated just for onboarding. Eureka!" To see this "innovative" 360 back to where square one restructuring was hilarious. It's like, are we just trying anything at this point to see if it works? Unfortunately, the sub par pay also applies to management which has led to subpar innovation. 5. The product - oh boy. So when I started with Neo, they had a 5 percent savings account, a free secured card. Objectively great products and you actually felt proud to be one of the very few companies offering such amazing rates. But 2.5 years later, the product line is one big "meh". Really nothing impressive. They boast cashbacks, but honestly it's not worth it especially with the caps. The app is easy to use sure but not really a big win there. 6. Keeping customers safe - okay this is a big one. In my opinion Neo just doesn't do enough to protect their customers and I have seen it from the front lines (I myself made countless calls to customers letting them know that we will not be compensating them). See, big banks have money to throw around so when customers get scammed, and even if it is their fault, the banks tend to pay them. Now because there is no law protecting customers against scams, and banks technically don't have to pay if the customer is liable, Neo will not cover you if you are liable. Sure, on paper, it's perfectly legal. But would I ever let my parents get anywhere close to having a neo credit card? No. With the level of scam sophistication these days, it's really easy to bamboozle people and then to say they are "liable" is in my opinion unfair. I would rather get a credit card with a bank that can afford to throw money around in case I get scammed and even if it is my fault. I have seen people who got a Neo credit card just to take advantage of a discount for one day, and not use it for a year, and then suddenly on the hook for 4 grand just because they mistakenly shared a Google wallet password. I have seen a single mom on the hook for 6 grand. Terrifying memories.