From the RBS side, absolutely. It’s more whether Starling are secure enough to provide that sort of assistance yet without risk to their own position. I guess it all depends what their targets are and how this aligns with those goals.
That W&G branding though. Ugh.
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Also from RBS’s perspective, if your new bank is dependent on a third party competitor, wouldn’t you either want to acquire them or ensure they change their business model as soon as your new venture gains traction?
Maybe… but W&G project was abandoned a while back.
As for the partnership, It’s interesting that’s for sure, I don’t think RBS will make a play for starling. They’ll learn stuff off each other in a contractual agreement and once that is over…
Cut ties and let the market do its thing.
They’ll learn stuff off each other in a contractual agreement and once that is over…
I really doubt there is much to learn though, the problem has never been the technology; any software engineer can build you a Monzo or Starling given enough time.
The main thing to “learn” is that there needs to be a change of mindset if you want to run a successful modern bank, and somehow I doubt RBS is capable of that. Just like in any big legacy company, there are just too many useless monkeys focused more on protecting their pay check & covering their ass than building a great product. Leasing infrastructure from Starling ain’t gonna change any of that. A round of layoffs will, but who would have enough courage to pull the trigger?
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100 times this. People who talk about digital as a channel fundamentally misunderstand it - it’s about culture and mindset. You can buy the tech, but if you don’t change the company…
The only way it would work would be to in the spirit of a reverse acquisition. Let the Starling business rapidly scale up, maintaining its tech culture (assuming it has one - it’s not very open, which isn’t a positive sign, but is likely to be miles ahead of RBS) and then persuade customers to move over to the Starling product, away from the RBS legacy. @j06 put it well in the RBS Challenger Bank thread:
Alas these types of acquisition rarely work well. Mostly due to ego and “we know best” attitude.
(I’d also take the opportunity to spin off the branch network and fundamentally rethink the bank. But that’d have the execs choking on their whatever).
As for Starling, we’re assuming they don’t want to be acquired. Maybe they do? Every startup needs an exit…
If they do want to remain independent, the only way I can see for them (if the RBS thing works out) is to refocus and become a banking platform. Cede the customer to Monzo. But focus on digital-age wholesale / commodity services…
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Pretty much why they are running this out of a completely different office, away from their main London office.
Starting from the ground up and not carrying over anything legacy.
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I think we’ve already had that debate over here:
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5 posts were split to a new topic: Bad challenger banks
Very interesting, will be good to hear more about this.
I hope they are looking forward to using GPS 
Seems from the comments above we agree what the end goal may be.
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https://www.starlingbank.com/investors/2018/letter-from-ceo/
Key points:
- 210,000 personal bank accounts - up from 43k in November 2017
- 60pc of accounts have monthly use
- Average deposit £900
- Direct debit use doubled year on year; use of faster payments tripled
- 10,000 business bank accounts
- Business marketplace coming soon
- Renewed DWP contract
- Signed payment services contract with RBS/Natwest
- Bidding for £120m from RBS remedy fund (for SME banking)
- Euro accounts postponed post Brexit
- Starling built on four pillars: retail banking, business banking, Marketplace and Banking-as-a-Service
Full annual report and accounts available here:
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Nice to finally see some proper info from Starling.
I’m sure I saw a 250k figure for accounts thrown around earlier in the year.
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@Peter_G. Not sure £120 will get them far. 
R-
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I’m sure just last week they were saying Euro accounts this autumn 
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Good letter imo. It’s interesting to see how they are growing their brand outside of just being a “challenger” current account.
Monzo and Starling are clearly following different paths and I almost feel like they are growing further and further apart as time goes on.
It’ll be interesting to see both grow in the future 
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They’re incredibly efficient, don’t you know.
(Edited to say million - It’s the biggest award possible)
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I find it pretty odd this shareholder letter is public. Their intended audience is obviously not shareholders.
They’ll have a handful of private shareholders at most and also their employees. But no public shareholders to see this public letter.
Interesting numbers either way.
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Can’t see their accounts on company house yet, assumed they’d release both at the same time
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I think that’s a touch unfair. Starling is criticised for not being transparent, then when they do publish, they’re criticised… I think it’s great we’re finally seeing some of this info - investors or not.
Here’s what the letter says:
We previously announced our intention to enter the Irish market in 2018. Once the full implications of the UK’s Brexit deal are understood, whatever the outcome, it’s our intention to launch a Starling proposition in key European markets during 2019.
Maybe they’ll still launch euro accounts for UK residents before then? 
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