Starling has achieved a net hire of 551 people since 23 March 2020
The digital bank managed to double its customer account numbers
The most switched-to digital-only bank and the second most switched-to bank in the final quarter of 2020
Cardiff is now the highest-staffed Starling office as it is followed by Southampton, London and Dublin
Generated a total revenue of £12 million in January 2021, which represents an annualised revenue run rate of c.£145 million and an increase of approximately 400% compared to January 2020
Is there any context on this anywhere? It sounds impressive without, but really needs context. Does anyone know what the number was before, or what it is now? An actual figure to go from will help gauge exactly how impressive this is compared to rivals.
Would love to know the actual numbers! 50k going to 100k for instance wouldn’t be nearly as impressive as say, 400k doubling to 800k.
Edit: found this!
Starling, founded in 2017, has now passed 2 million accounts, with 300,000 business accounts among them. It’s not clear how many of those accounts are active: the figures are for opened accounts, Starling said. Gross lending has passed £2 billion, with deposits at £5.4 billion.
This article is dated the 9th of March 2021. Reasonable to assume then that they’re well over 4 million now! That’s very impressive and puts them right up there on Monzo’s heels!
According to TechCrunch on March 9th, Starling had over 2 million accounts. Figure is in the article I shared above.
According to the Everly article @Mathew shared, they’ve doubled their customer account numbers since March 23.
Implausible as it sounds. If the figures reported by TechCrunch are accurate, then it stands to reason they now have more than 4 million accounts. A very impressive feat.
Worth noting that there appears to be no distinction between the accounts though, and it’s possible multiple accounts belonging to the same user are being counted as part of that 4 million (business, personal, joint, euro).
That’s in contrast to Monzo, who I believe consider users with multiple accounts as a single customer for their counter, which is at over 5 million now.
Some greater clarity would be nice so we know how to slice it, but however it’s cut, it’s a good achievement.
Is that an actual full account? I’d always thought it was just a spare card connected to a space.
I think the term customer accounts is too specific to not be counting all the additional accounts of a single user, so if those are considered full accounts too, I suspect they’ll be included, and would perhaps go a ways to explain the very impressive doubling of accounts. I certainly would have paid for one!
They had 800k+ the other year and I believe they said they expected to get to a million by December (Dec 2019… this last year has been a total blur). So if they have 2 million now that’s doubling of their accounts in a year. Which is impressive
Absolutely astounding numbers. They deserve all the credit and accolades. This is the result of having an experienced CEO who knows how to succeed in the finance industry.
Independent British startup, who’s backing Starling again? I know it’s a single investor iirc (probably has more stake than Anne by now but I’m guessing there’ll be some stock options as long as she delivers, which she is) but where is he from? I think he’s British but I cant really remember
I do like the idea of supporting British companies as opposed to foreign ones these days, too. The Chinese are very good at boycotting companies who speak out against them in any way, similarly I’d like us to back our companies in the right way: actively supporting them
McPike cashed out 60%, as I recall. From memory, the Qatari Investment Authority, Constancy and some UK pension all now have a stake. It’s a UK business, but the money is international.
Who owns Starling?
Starling is an independent, privately-owned company and is not part of any other bank.
It is part-owned by CEO and founder Anne Boden, employees and an employee benefits trust set up for employees.
Its investors include some of the world’s biggest financial heavyweights. They are:
JTC, which oversees the investment activity of Harry McPike, a global private investor; Jupiter (formerly Merian), a leading investor in the UK; Fidelity Management & Research Company, a global investor; RPMI Railpen, the investment manager for the £31 billion Railways Pension Scheme; Qatar Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund of the State of Qatar; Millennium Management, a global investment firm; and Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, part of Goldman Sachs Group.
