A UK digital bank founded in 2014 by Anne Boden with offices in London, Cardiff, Southampton and Manchester. It also sells its banking software, Engine, to other firms, and has run summer internships in London.
Starling Bank is a UK digital bank that has no branches. You run your personal or business account through an app, with features such as separate "Spaces" for saving, spending insights, "Settle Up" for sending money to friends and in-app chat with customer service. Cash can be paid in or taken out through Post Office locations. It is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
Starling was started in 2014 by Anne Boden, who had previously been chief operating officer at Allied Irish Banks. It received its banking licence in July 2016, launched personal accounts in beta in March 2017 and business accounts in March 2018. Raman Bhatia has been chief executive since March 2024. It is headquartered in London, with offices in Cardiff, Southampton and Manchester, and had around 4,158 employees in 2026 (Wikipedia). Cardiff is its largest site, with teams in financial crime, engineering, customer service and data science; work done there has included the Bills Manager feature and the Kite children's banking app. In September 2025 it rebranded as simply "Starling".
We did not find a formal mission statement in the sources we read. Its graduate listing states five values: Listen, Keep It Simple, Do The Right Thing, Own It, and Aim For Greatness. Starling describes a flat structure "to empower you to make decisions" (company claim).
As well as being a bank for customers, Starling sells its own banking technology to other companies through a platform called Engine, covering payments, card processing and account opening, and it has announced plans to take Engine to North America, including a New York office. It has also added mortgages, buying Fleet Mortgages in 2021 and a mortgage portfolio from Masthaven in 2022.
Starling says it hires on "attitude and aptitude" (chief people officer, 2022). For young people, its 2025 graduate software engineer scheme started on 1 September 2025 and was open to recent graduates, with the application window closed in December 2024. It asked for no specific degree, such as computer science, but required you to show you could write quality code, plus the right to work in the UK. Graduates joined a cohort, worked in teams on the core platform, internal tools and new features, and could be based in Cardiff, London or Manchester with hybrid working. Starling has also run a summer internship: in one write-up, seven interns spent eight weeks in London on projects in product design, risk and vendor management and said they were treated as colleagues. Listed benefits include 25 days' holiday plus a birthday day off, 16 paid volunteering hours a year, an enhanced pension and private medical insurance (company descriptions). We did not find pay.
Website: www.starlingbank.com
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