Starling is now one of the UK’s largest neobanks, with more than 4.2m customers and £11bn in deposits. It’s also raised more than $1.1bn in funding from investors, including the Qatar Investment Authority, Goldman Sachs and Fidelity Investments.
Founded in 2014 by former banking veteran Anne Boden, Starling banks and lends to both retail customers and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and has £2.3bn on its loan book as of its latest financial results.
The UK challenger bank also holds the enviable position of having reported profitability for the last three consecutive years. Its peers can’t boast of the same: fellow neobank Monzo reported profitability for the first time last summer while financial superapp Revolut returned to profitability in its 2023 results after sinking into the red the year prior.
The neobank’s profitability streak had made it a top candidate for an initial public offering, although it’s recently sailed into choppy waters. In October, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority fined the challenger bank £29m for its “shockingly lax” financial crime controls. Starling says it’s introduced additional safeguards to ensure it complies with regulatory requirements.
A month after the fine, The Guardian reported a number of staff resigned after new CEO Raman Bhatia mandated that its 3,500 employees attend the office more frequently, despite lacking enough space to host them. (Boden resigned as CEO in 2023 and from its board in 2024.)
It’s not just office policies that Bhatia’s shaken up; he’s also given the bank’s C-suite a refresh — as we map out today.
The new boss: Raman Bhatia
CEO Raman Bhatia joined Starling in June last year from energy firm OVO, where he was first COO, then CEO. Prior to that, he headed up HSBC’s digital business for over five years.
He’s been busy making his mark. This week it was announced that he’s poached former OVO colleague Joe Gordon to take up the role of Starling chief operating officer, the latest in a string of C-suite shake-ups.
Last week, Bhatia announced that 20-year banking veteran Raghu Narula would be joining Starling as chief banking officer later this year following regulatory approval. Other recent additions to Starling’s leadership team include ex-Expedia exec Michele Rousseau as chief marketing officer and former TSB business banking exec Adeel Hyder as managing director of Starling’s SME banking division.
The Starling C-suite
Bhatia will have to rely on his C-suite to steer the good ship Starling back in the right direction. His leadership team includes former execs from finance firms like HSBC and AXA as well as executives that have been at Starling for more than five years. Excluding new joiners, Starling’s top dogs have been at the fintech on average for five years and nine months — close to two years longer than the average tenure of current C-suiters at Monzo.
Newly-inaugurated group chief technology officer Steve Newson is Starling’s longest-serving executive. He’s been at the company for close to a decade and was part of the founding team when he joined Starling in 2015 as director of technology. He was most recently the challenger bank’s operations lead before moving into the chief technology officer role of Starling Group in January.
Chief financial officer Declan Ferguson has been at the company for seven years. He joined as head of strategy in July 2017. He quickly rose up the ranks at Starling and was promoted to chief strategy officer in 2019 before becoming CFO in April 2022.
Other members of the C-suite include chief risk officer Cyrille Salle de Chou, who joined a year ago from HSBC where he oversaw risk for HSBC UK retail, wealth and private banking; and former AXA head of price optimisation Harriet Rees who occupies the role of chief information officer after initially joining in 2017 as Starling’s head of data science.
There’s also ex-Times journalist-turned-chief corporate affairs officer Alexandra Frean, who joined Starling in 2018 after interviewing its founder.
“We sat in a cafe talking for hours about her ambitions to disrupt banking and to apply for a £100m grant (subsequently awarded),” Frean previously told Sifted. “I was blown away. The next day I called her to say I was applying for the communications job Starling was advertising.”
The new ventures
Rounding out the list includes Sam Everington, CEO of Starling’s software-as-a-service arm Engine, who’s spent just over eight years at the company. Launched in 2022, Engine helps other banks — like Salt Bank in Romania and AMP in Australia — create digital operations of their own.
He previously led the development and design of the core banking platform powering Starling and has high hopes Starling’s SaaS side hustle can one day be a bigger breadwinner than its bank.
Everington’s joined by former NatWest Markets exec Damian Thompson, who serves as chief asset management officer; former head of complaints at Aldermore Bank Maria Vidler, who’s Starling’s chief customer officer and chief people officer Susanna Yallop, formerly HR manager at BP.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/starlings-new-power-players/
