If they have over 70,000 shouldn’t they have to publish this anyway? Does that not call the 200,000 figure into doubt.
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Possibly. I’ve not looked into it, but the 70k figure might be an average over the year, for example, which they might well be below.
Is it number of users or number of current accounts? How many personal accounts vs business do they actually have?
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It’s all very opaque…
Not sure I understand what you mean here.
The policy document states:
This chapter applies to a firm in relation to a current account measurement period (see BCOBS 7.7.1R):
(a) in respect of personal current accounts held with the firm under a trading name of the firm, if:
(i) at the start of the current account measurement period, 70,000 or more personal current accounts are held with the firm under that trading name; and
(ii) 70,000 or more personal current accounts were held with the firm under that trading name throughout the previous two current account measurement periods; and
(b) in respect of business current accounts held with the firm under a trading name of the firm, if:
(i) at the start of the current account measurement period, 15,000 or more business current accounts are held with the firm under that trading name; and
(ii) 15,000 or more business current accounts were held with the firm under that trading name throughout the previous two current account measurement periods.
Where:
The effect of TP 9 is that a firm that on 15 August 2018 has 70,000 or more personal current accounts, or 15,000 or more business current accounts, under one of its trading names, and which has had the requisite number of accounts since 1 February 2018, must comply with BCOBS 7 from 15 August 2018.
Which seems to me to mean they have not had 70,000+ personal current accounts or 15,000 business current accounts from 1 February 2018. As to whether they now have 200,000+ is anyones guess.
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I think this might be the key bit, they won’t have had over 70k accounts for the preview two measurement periods.
Also, how long does a measurement period last? Edit - A) 6 months.
We proposed that where firms have fewer than 70,000 PCAs or 15,000
BCAs but later meet this threshold, they should not be required to measure service
information for two quarterly reporting periods. This allows firms at least six months to
introduce the required measuring and reporting capability.
from the policy document
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So it has to satisfy all criteria? 70k at the start and 70k in the pervious 2 periods?
As the first measurement period began in February 2018, the first reporting period is August. If they had 70,000 in February they would have had to report now.
All that said, aren’t Starling now compliant? When I first looked at the FCA website, I did think that they were missing. They’re now present and the info is also in the blog post I linked to… 
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I don’t believe that’s the case. I think that’s an ongoing clause. The implementation details state any bank with 70,000+ from the first reporting period starting 1 February 2018 have to report in August 2018.
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Could you please share the link to the policy document with us so that we can check out all the details?
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The blog they put up states:
As a new challenger bank Starling has not yet reached the threshold for publishing customer satisfaction scores, but with a user base growing at a rate of 20 per cent a month, we soon will be.
Which is the important bit for the purposes of this regulation. The information they have published they have to do so regardless of customer numbers.
Ah yes, missed that bit. Good spot.
Where did you read this sorry?
Page 33 - transitional provisions.
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Got it so (from page 6)
1.20 The rules set out in Appendix 1 will come into force on 15 August 2018. On this date,
providers will be required to publish standing data related to account opening and
service availability and major incident metrics.1.21 Transitional provisions will allow firms not to publish account opening metrics and debit
card replacement metrics until 15 February 2019. To publish these metrics from this
date, firms will need to start recording and measuring the time taken to open accounts and to replace a debit card from 1 October 2018.
as you said, it looks like they didn’t have more than 70k customers in Feb & we have a long wait to find out how many they do have 
If they had, had 70k accounts in February then with a 20% growth rate, they’d have only got to 200k+ users this month. But they’ve only recently stepped up their advertising 
| Month | Users |
|---|---|
| February | 70,000 |
| March | 84,000 |
| April | 100,800 |
| May | 120,960 |
| June | 145,152 |
| July | 174,182 |
| August | 209,019 |
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Didn’t someone band that number around recently after their radio interview (200K customers?)
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Is this correct, from the Starling forum?
The worst part of this for me is that Starling can now charge interest to customers with a positive overall balance just like Monzo do.
I’m just asking because a lot of the folks who were upset about this justified using Starling over us because of it. I am genuinely interested in how it works on their end compared with our present offering.
I guess what I’m saying is - I understand why we do it, because we believe the user is in control over whether or not they have money in Pots that they’d like to keep separate from the main balance, but I don’t know enough about the Starling offering to know whether it’s the same kind of thing?
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