When Raman Bhatia joined Starling Bank as chief executive two years ago, it signalled the digital bank was growing up.
After nine years under Anne Boden - who secured Starling’s place in the banking industry - Bhatia’s appointment showed the bank was focusing primarily on growth rather than solely on disruption.
Bhatia - a seasoned operator who previously headed up HSBC’s digital bank before leading energy firm Ovo - says that while the bank is still in ‘growth mode’, the core DNA of the business as a ‘disruptor’ has not changed since his appointment.
While visiting its East London office, he told This is Money that he wants to pull Starling into the AI age as he continues to fend off stiff competition from Monzo and Revolut.
When Revolut secured its banking licence last month, some parts of the fintech industry were breathless with excitement that the UK-based bank could expand even further.
The tech giant was the last of the trio of digital banks that emerged in the mid-2010s to receive the licence, after Starling and Monzo. Even so, Revolut has dwarfed the competition in a tough landscape.
But Starling is pinning its hopes on its software business - which sells its proprietary tech to other banks - which could prove to be the bank’s crown jewel and a way to crack the all-important US market.
Competition for customers is harder than ever
The first wave of fintech disruption in the mid-2010s triggered a fundamental change in the way Britons bank.The pioneers of that are now the victims of that success, though, as multi-banking - when people have more than one or two bank accounts - has become the standard, making it harder to retain customers.
While Revolut and Monzo have around 14million retail customers each, Starling has 4million.
Bhatia bats these headline figures away: ‘It’s not just a game of headline customer numbers, it’s about average balance position with the customer, engagement with customers. I think we sit in that sweet spot.’
He also rules out relying on juicy switching offers that legacy banks rely on to beef up customer numbers. ‘We don’t want to do that. We attract customers through referrals, the experience we offer… that’s where we put our money, not in baits,’ he says.
Instead, he hopes that a new AI tool, along with a suite of other products, will help to draw customers in and, crucially, retain them.
Starling claims its agentic AI ‘assistant’, which uses Google Gemini, will help manage customers’ personal finances and share ‘personalised financial insights’.
For example, a customer saving for a holiday can hand over the details - ‘I need to save £1,000 by August for Las Vegas’ for example - and the tool will set up saving pots or direct debits automatically.
I like Starling, but all this AI garbage is starting to give me serious reservations.
Yes, you can turn it off (apart from the button on the Home Screen that keeps blinking at me), but I’d rather they focussed on features that were actually useful…like being able to set up an automatic transfer into their cash ISA. Crazy as that sounds. 
I hope you’ve got a decent cash ISA with Starling? Although I’m no longer a customer for over 3 years now, I just looked at their cash ISA rate and it’s pretty naff compared to a new account with Trading 212 (as an example of what’s available).
No, the rate is pretty underwhelming at 2.5%. I’m not actually using it, but I just find it odd they don’t let you make automatic transfers. It seems like such an obvious thing that I wish they would focus their attention on before introducing bankslop.
I’ve just googled the CEOs CV and it’s not clear to me how much banking experience he actually has..
Five years at HSBC as the head of digital banking. It’s not an inconsequential amount of experience.