Starling Feedback

It looks like they’ve got until the 31st August to file - I’m assuming they’ll do it tomorrow after the Bank Holiday.

Interestingly, the actual accounts (as opposed to the letter) are about the period to end Nov 17 - so actually cover an earlier period than Monzo’s (whose financial year ended in Feb 18). It looks like Starling, for whatever reason, were waiting as long as possible before lodging them.

3 Likes

Because Starling :woman_shrugging:

5 Likes

I don’t have a problem with the transparency of the letter, I totally welcome that. I just mean that it’s a letter to shareholders, and they don’t have any public shareholders, so seemed kinda odd to me.

I would have thought their private shareholders are up to date with this anyway (as they’ll only be a few), important partnerships and KPI’s I imagine they’re updated weekly/monthly on, so the intended audience for this letter was always the public, so why have it as a shareholder update?

It’s not a problem nor a big deal, I just found it kinda odd.

2 Likes

Would have been great if they released how many people were Full Starling ( I know the definition is a bit fluffy) but this:

Doesn’t really indicate much, could have gone up from 10 to 20…

2 Likes

Agreed. The only significant figure is the average deposit amount, I think.

60% of 210,000 is 126,000 accounts that are seeing monthly use. I wonder how this is defined? Opening the app? Making a transaction?

Also, average deposit seems to me to be different to the average account balance (which I what I thought we were discussing yesterday). If this is a mean average of the amount that every customer pays into their account, then you might be looking at half the 126k figure again who’ve gone to Starling as their main bank.

(But then, I might have got this all wrong - in banking land, does average deposit mean a payment into an account or how much an account holds? :thinking:)

A mixed picture, I think. But hopefully Starling is on the up - but like others have said, some interesting strategic divergences from Monzo beginning to show. (Have thoughts - will write about them some time…)

6 Likes

“monthly transaction volumes now exceed £200 million a month”

Where can I find this info for Monzo?

2 Likes

Comparing average balance and average deposit is as useful as Trump at a Mensa meeting

3 Likes

Is that personal accounts or personal and business combined?

I’m pretty sure that Monzo haven’t published it (I’m not sure what it really tells us) but like everything else in this report, it pretty safe to assume that Monzo’s are 4x - 5x higher.

3 Likes

assumption is the mother of all …

1 Like

I know :slight_smile:

1 Like

“Monzo in 2018” suggested £2bn for all time…so i guess a division by a year a half might be a rough guess if we’re going down the assumptions route. It’s odd that the 2018 reports an all time number rather than for the year in question.

I guess no point trying to compare apples with oranges, but I think its safe to assume it most certainly isn’t 4x - 5x higher - given the average deposit of £150 v £900. :wink:

2 Likes

Didn’t we conclude that these are actually measuring different things? :thinking:

4 Likes

Aren’t you comparing the average balance to the average deposit?

5 Likes

image

Is Starling the only UK 100% mobile bank account? :face_with_monocle:

3 Likes

Let’s work this out properly. Taking the figures from the respective annual reports:

Cash in hand and balances at the bank:
Monzo: 96,943,000
Starling: 37,544,000

Customer numbers (as reported in the annual report):
Monzo: ~750,000
Starling: ~210,000

Average account balance per bank:
Monzo: 129.26
Starling: 178.78

(Can someone check my maths? That was quick and dirty on a train :train2:)

Edit: not that I think that this is particularly useful info…

3 Likes

absolutely no idea to be honest, i’m just having some fun…

Report to feb ‘17 says 250 million spent
Report to feb ‘18 says 2 billion spent

2 billion -250 million

Presumably now Monzo has an emergency web interface…?

(Although a bit cheeky, given you can phone Starling)

Edit: re-read the ad - it doesn’t say that Starling is the only app only bank… Slight of hand in the copy there

2 Likes

You are correct :joy: My turn to be slow…

1 Like