Starling Bank to cut 130 jobs and boost investment in AI to reduce costs

The London-based fintech says restructuring is necessary to reduce ‘duplicate’ roles

Starling Bank has said it will cut more than 100 jobs as it invests more heavily in artificial intelligence to push down costs.

The digital-only bank told staff that 3% of its workforce, or 130 jobs, would be made redundant, as part of a restructuring of its banking and tech operations.

The London-based fintech, which employs more than 4,000 people, said the restructuring was necessary as it reduced “duplicate” roles and stepped up its spending on AI.

The bank said a factor in its “competitive edge over legacy banks” was its “agility” and “ability to rest, launch, learn and reorganise at pace”.

“While we are continuing to hire tech and AI engineers, we recently told colleagues that we are changing parts of our banking team structure to simplify how we operate, reduce instances of duplication, and drive further product delivery at pace,” it said.

“We have begun a period of consultation with colleagues whose roles may be affected by these changes.”

The cuts come at a critical point for the bank, which reported a 6% drop in revenue in the year that ended in March to £887m. Its pre-tax profit dropped 3% to £217m, which it said was partly due to investments in its digital banking software, Engine.

Starling, which was founded in 2014 by the former Royal Bank of Scotland executive Anne Boden, was part of a trio of online-only neo-banks that emerged in the mid-2010s to disrupt traditional banking in the UK, alongside Revolut and Monzo.

It has 6.2 million customers, with the majority of these in the UK. However, like several of its peers, it has struggled to expand abroad and in 2022 gave up on a bid to secure a European banking licence.

Its growth also took a hit in 2021 after the UK’s financial watchdog placed restrictions on it due to findings around poor financial crime controls. The rules stopped Starling from opening new accounts for high-risk customers.

In 2024, the Financial Conduct Authority then found the bank had operated with “shockingly lax” controls, which it said had “left the financial system wide open to criminals and those subject to sanctions”. The regulator fined it £29m.

However, there has long been speculation that the bank could list on the stock market. In January, Starling’s chief executive, Raman Bhatia, told the Sunday Times that while there were no “firm plans”, he could “see this business as a plc … in a near-term window”.