Latest news with #StarlingBank
Finextra
5 days ago
- Business
- Finextra
Shawbrook Bank owner Pollen Street eyes up takeover of Metro Bank
Shares in Metro Bank have continued to climb in early-morning trading after it emerged that the UK lender may have been lined up for a takeover by private equity firm Pollen Street Capital. 0 This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community. Metro's share price was up 16.6% on reports that Pollen Street was eyeing up a potential combination with majority-owned Shawbrook Bank. Shawbrook's owners have intensified efforts to identify meger opportunities, having previously held talks with Starling Bank about a £5 billion tie-up. Metro Bank - which was an avid proponent of the branch banking model - became the first new lender to open on Britain's high streets in over 100 years when it launched following the 2008 financial crisis. However, the bank came close to insolvency after an accounting scandal in 2023 rocked the loss-making firm to its core. The struggling lender secured a £925 million rescue deal anchored by Colombian billionaire James Gilinski Baca and has since cut over a thousand jobs in a bid to stay afloat. UK specialist lender Shawbrook in January was rumoured to be weighing a sale or a London listing at a valuation of £2 billion. Any deal to take Metro Bank private would be a double blow to the London Stock Exchange, which has seen a fleet of firms depart from their primary or entire UK listing in favour of privatisation or overseas.
Finextra
10-06-2025
- Business
- Finextra
Starling rolls out AI-based 'Spending Intelligence' tool
Starling Bank is putting Generative AI into the hands of its customers with the roll out of a new 'Spending Intelligence' Large Language Model that customers can interrogate to get insights into their spending habits. 0 Starling's chatbot, built on Google's LLM Gemini, is being rolled out to all customers from today. Spending Intelligence operates within a search bar on the Starlingg app, enabling customers to post questions about their spending over a specific period of time, such as 'how much did I donate to charity last year?' ot 'what did I spend on groeries last week?'. Questions can either be typed into the search bar or customers can ask the chatbot verbally. Starling finance chief Declan Ferguson, says: "Really pleased to be the first UK Bank to putting generative AI in the hands of our customers. This feature, powered by Google's Gemini, is our first step towards a bigger ambition to implement AI within our banking app to all customers." Speaking at Money20/20 last week, Ferguson said the bank intends to hire another 400 software engineers this year asit accelerates the development of AI across the organisation.
Daily Mail
10-06-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Starling Bank blocked me from buying a EuroMillions ticket and locked my account for two days
I decided to buy a £2.50 EuroMillions ticket last week but my payment wouldn't go through, so I contacted my bank, Starling. It said the EuroMillions ticket couldn't be bought because I have a gambling block on my account, which is something I don't ever recall asking for. I asked Starling to lift it and its customer service representative said it was done but that my account was now blocked for two days – and there was no way to reverse this. Is this right, it seems a bit harsh for a lottery ticket? Jane Denton, of This is Money, replies: The EuroMillions bumper jackpot has reached dizzying heights in recent weeks - including hitting £208million last Friday. That wasn't won and the record breaking sum is still up for grabs tonight (Tuesday 10 June 2025). It is noteworthy you do not recall asking for the bank's gambling block to be switched on for your account. I contacted Starling Bank about your question and its spokesman pointed me to the bank's gambling policy on its website. On Starling's website, gambling is defined as involving a person betting money or something of value against an outcome that is not within their control, in the hope of winning money or some kind of reward. Betting on sports, horse racing or other sporting events constitutes gambling, Starling said. Betting at a casino, playing slots or using an electronic gambling machine are also gambling, it adds. 'Games designed for gambling', such as bingo, blackjack or poker, also fall in scope for the definition of gambling, Starling said. Crucially for your case, the following also, according to Starling, constitutes gambling: 'Playing instant win games or buying a lottery ticket.' Starling is quite right to point out that harmful gambling is a serious issue that can cause people to lose control and bring harm to themselves or others around them. A Starling spokesman said of the gambling block: 'Once customers choose to turn it on, they won't be able to make payments with your card to gambling merchants – online or in person and this includes the Euromillions. 'And if customers want to reactivate it, there's a 48-hour delay, making gambling or betting on impulse more difficult.' On its website, Starling suggests that you would need to switch on the gambling block in order for it to work. I'm not sure how or why it's been switched on in your case. Starling's website does state its gambling block will not stop all 'gambling-related payments', including purchasing a lottery ticket at a supermarket or newsagent, placing a bet on a site that is not categorised as a gambling merchant, or gambling subscriptions that are paid by direct debit faster payments or bank transfers. I note you had to wait 48 hours to to be able to buy a lottery ticket after the gambling block was switched off. This meant you could not buy a EuroMillions ticket for Friday in time. While inconvenient for you, the 48-hour period is aimed at helping prevent people with a gambling problem from making impulse bets. I imagine you have been left wondering what life would have been like with more than £208million in the bank. Unless you defy all the odds tonight, you may have to ponder a little while longer.
The Verge
10-06-2025
- Business
- The Verge
Starling's AI banking tool shows you how much you're wasting on McDonald's
Starling Bank, one of the UK's digital challenger banks, has launched a new AI-powered tool that will answer questions about your spending habits. You can now easily find out how much you've spent at Amazon in a particular month, how much money you've wasted on fast food outlets over the past year, or how much cash you've received over a particular period. Starling's AI tool, or enhanced search as the bank calls it, is an opt-in feature that enables a prompt where you can ask questions about your spending habits. The tool, built with Google Gemini, even suggests prompts that are personalized to your spending patterns. Transactions are listed by retailer and are automatically sorted into more than 50 customizable categories, like bills, transport, and groceries. This makes it easy to see how much you've spent at a particular retailer over a period of time, or how much you've spent on categories like eating out. I checked to see how much I've spent on McDonald's over the past year, and let's just say I'm off Big Macs for the foreseeable future. You'll be presented with a graph and analytics about your spending habits, along with a breakdown of individual payments to retailers in a particular category. It helps address the problem of having the ability to track your payments to retailers in banking apps, but not being able to easily manipulate that data and really understand your finances. 'We believe that anyone and everyone can be 'Good with money,' so we've designed this feature so that people can engage with their finances in a way that feels natural to them,' says Harriet Rees, CIO of Starling Bank. 'The more you talk or type, the more you'll learn about your money management.' Starling is one of a few big digital banks in the UK that have taken a mobile-only approach to try and shake up banking in Britain. Starling now has 4.6 million customer accounts, competing against Monzo's more than 12 million customers and Revolut's more than 10 million. All three are still far ahead of traditional banks in digital features, including virtual debit cards, the ability to track spending habits, and real-time transactions.
Daily Mail
10-06-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Starling launches AI chatbot Spending Intelligence in UK banking first
Finding out how much money you spent on coffee last month will soon become a faster exercise than trawling through bank statements or paying for a budgeting app to work it out. That's because Starling Bank is ramping up its use of Artificial Intelligence for current account customers. It has become the first bank in the UK to integrate its very own Large Language Model (LLM) AI chatbot within its banking app. The chatbot, called Spending Intelligence, uses LLMs to answer questions customers pose to it about their spending. Starling's chatbot is powered by Gemini, Google's LLM and answer to OpenAI's ChatGPT, a move which made sense for Starling as the bank houses its tech with Google Cloud Platform. It's available to all customers, both personal and business accounts - sole and joint - from today. Spending Intelligence appears as a search bar and sits at the top of Starling's legacy 'spending' area within Starling's banking app. The spending area gives customers information about how much they spend, where they spend it and when. It can be split up into more than 50 categories which customers can customise. Starling's AI chatbot takes the spending area a step further by providing answers to customers about their spending within a specific period of time, for example within the last month or year, and showing them a breakdown. Customers can ask it questions like 'how much did I spend on groceries last week?' or 'how much did I donate to charity last year?' These questions can either be typed into the search bar or customers can ask the chatbot verbally. Spending Intelligence can only draw insights from Starling accounts and gives answers based on this data. The chatbot cannot tell customers what to do with their money - for example where to invest it or how to save more money - as this would fall into the remit of regulated advice. But the idea is to get customers to think about how they are spending. The hope is that it will help customers to see exactly where their money goes The Starling chatbot is free to use and chief information officer Harriet Rees says there are 'absolutely no plans to make it paid for use'. More AI coming down the line for Starling The Spending Intelligence chatbot is the first step towards a bigger ambition to implement AI within its banking app. The hope is it will nudge customers towards using more of its existing money management features as well as new tools Starling develops in the future. Rees says: 'Customers can use AI to feed their natural curiosity about their finances so that they can make informed decisions about their budgeting, and better utilise Starling's suite of money management tools.' While customers will learn about their spending habits by using the chatbot, at the same time Starling will be learning from its customers through the questions they ask to identify areas where it can roll out more AI in the future. 'This is the first step for us of putting AI in the hands of customers' Rees tells This is Money. 'But there's so much further we could go' she adds. These could include fraud detection and new customer onboarding according to Rees. The information Starling receives from customers through the questions they ask cannot be used by Google's Gemini to feed its Large Language Models, this is part of Starling's agreement with Google. Starling said: 'Customers have to opt in to use Spending Intelligence. It does not store sensitive information and customers can opt out at any time.' In the future Spending Intelligence could potentially evolve into telling customers how they could save money if they were to ask the chatbot to identify areas. But for the moment it is focused solely on spending. Rees says: 'We're having a think about how you could save. But we genuinely believe giving customers insights about how they are spending is the best way to get them thinking about where they could save.'
