This year Abu Dhabi Finance Week 2024 (ADFW) attracted more than 20,000 leaders and experts from global financial institutions in four days. During the event, The Age of Fintech caught up in Sam EveringtonCEO of Starling’s engine.
Starling’s engine is behind the moving platform Starling Bankthe UK’s digital challenger bank, and the company is now looking to take this technology and offer it to other banking partners to help deliver digitally native experiences elsewhere.
“We’re taking the technology we originally developed for Starling Bank in the UK to deliver rich, personalized, digital, native experiences that put it at the top of the UK customer satisfaction charts, and partnering with other bank and supply markets. both multiple experiences and the same operational experience,” Everington explained.
“It’s actually the back office management portal, as we call it, that’s exciting for the banks. Many of them are developing and investing in their apps and other channels, but they have complex landscapes of back – many different systems, running machines, with a pane of glass on the entire retail business and all the products.
European success
These efforts are off to a good start for Engine, which shares two major successes from this year. The first is others Salt Banka Romanian bank based in Bucharest.
“We put Salt Bank live, owned by Bank of Transylvaniathe largest banking group in Southeast Europe. They launched in April and took less than 12 months to integrate, develop their apps, build local market integrations and ensure compliance to get a rich proposition to market.
“They have about 18 or 19 different currencies as well. It’s much richer than Starling’s proposition. Just launching in April, they’ve got 300,000 customers on the platform, which is absolutely amazing.
Everington also highlighted its work with Australia’s AMP Bank: “AMP is almost the opposite end of the spectrum, because it’s a 175-year-old institution, which is primarily a pensions and wealth advisory business that runs in a bank that offers savings and loans.
“They partnered with us to bring, initially a small business transaction account offered to the market, but also their new retail customers. We started the implementation in October last year and went live in October this year – so, again, less than 12 months to integrate with the existing systems, the integrated ledger and regulatory reporting of the group, as well the Australian domestic market, all rail payments, onboarding systems and ID databases. That will be launched in the public market in Q1 next year.”
GCC opportunity
While in the UAE, Everington also discussed Engine’s regional focus. “We are very focused on the GCC at this point. There is also interest from other markets, but this GCC is a particularly interesting market for us because there is such a high level of digital adoption and digital acceptance, but the banks haven’t yet taken in. There are some great digital propositions here, but I don’t think anything can compete with where Starling is right now.
“European banks are basically risk-averse, and they often lack the capital to provide investment. They still have ambition, but the ability to deliver is more limited. It’s taking a little longer to deliver change there.
“This region has ambition, but it also has the ability to deliver. There is a real culture of doing things and doing things quickly, and that is very attractive for us. We like it. I think the proposition will be very good in the region.”
Supporting the small business economy
Starling’s Engine also identified an opportunity to serve established banks in the region, and help them expand into new markets, Everington said. As banks look to develop propositions in new regions or countries, Engine technology can prove to be an important accelerator.
“Small business banking is very lacking here, because the small business economy is booming. There are about half a million small businesses in the UAE at the moment, which is predicted to grow to one million in the next five years or more,” he explained.
As banks look to capitalize on this space with new products, Engine’s proposition also aims to help bring them to market faster.
“This provides a great opportunity for us because when you set up a business, one of the first things you do is open a new bank account. This is an acquisition channel for banks in any market, new businesses are a real economic priority for GCC governments and banks generally have no competitive option there – then they look at Starling market share within five year, half a million business customers, and is approaching the fifth largest business bank in Britain. The proposition works for the small end of the micro business, and we can deliver it quickly to regional banks.
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