I have not heard about hard credit checks, only that some claim soft credit checks which do not leave an impact on the credit file. I do believe Starling are morally right in the way they’ve handled this and they’re right to be cautious with their lending.
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Soft check or hard, morally right or not, they are not following the rules.
Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if the regulator stepped in here. It’s a complete disaster.
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Of course they can.
It’s not Starling lending money in that the government are guaranteeing the loans totally and taking all the risk.
What Starling have effectively agreed and failed to do is administer the scheme properly on HMGs behalf.
Credit checks for bounceback loans are allowed but only for money laundering and fraud prevention. Their public statements make it clear that this is not all Starling have used them for.
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seems pretty clear
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I agree. I can’t find any public information either.
The onboarding process for lenders to become BBB accredited and the rules to become certified to participate in their schemes wouldn’t be public, though.
The consumer-facing information isn’t going to include the scheme rules, just what consumers need to know.
My best guess is their loan process/onboarding process usually runs those checks, and they didn’t adapt those processes for this one particular scheme in time (as they were accredited and launched quickly).
My best guess re why the rejection rate is suddenly high, is their cap ratio was/is getting close to risky. They leant £300m of bounce back loans very quickly - I’m not sure on the latest deposits figure from Starling, but assuming it’s between £1-3bn, it’s quite a lot to lend (and on top of their existing commitments) and may have been getting into the territory of uncomfortable for them.
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Starling will still have to do recovery on the bad loans, it seems, whether they’re backed by the government or not. Accepting loads of applicants with very poor scores could cause a massive headache down the line too.
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After the loan has been granted, the banks will be responsible for managing the loan and recovering bad debts. They are not bare agents, by any means.
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I’ve just this second updated the Starling app, and no sign of this. Must be iOS only… (for now?)
this only came in todays ios update so probably be in the next android one?
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Genuinely curious in wondering how often Starling Employees lurk around here? There’s no way they’ve done that in the time since Monzo launched the feature(at least publicly anyway)
Come on Starlings, Show yourselves 
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Monzo launched it on Android in November/December so they’ve had ages!
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Yh thats why I added the following bit:
By that I meant out of labs on both platforms 
Starling’s ‘Toolkit’ looks pretty cool. If we can’t open a Monzo business account it makes me wonder whether we (as a small 3-person team) could use that instead of a full blown accounting app like Xero. What do you think?
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‘community website forwards emails to department’ isn’t quite the same headline is it? I do think MSE are quite up themselves sometimes.
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