Starling Bank

Is Starling Bank safe?

Yes, up to the FSCSDeposit insuranceA government-backed scheme that repays bank customers up to a set limit if their bank fails, such as the FDIC in the US or the FSCS in the UK.More in the glossary limit. Starling is a fully authorised UK bank, Starling Bank Limited, so eligible money in its personal, joint and business accounts is protected to £120,000 per person. It holds much more capital than it needs, keeps most of its deposits in central bank cash and bonds, and made £217 million before tax in its last financial year. The score of 70/100 is held back by a £29 million FCA fine for weak sanctions and money-laundering controls and the short record of a bank that has never faced a crisis.

Deposit protection

Starling runs one UK banking licence for all its customers, so there is one limit to keep track of:

Account	FSCSDeposit insuranceA government-backed scheme that repays bank customers up to a set limit if their bank fails, such as the FDIC in the US or the FSCS in the UK.More in the glossary limit
Personal account and Spaces	£120,000 per person, added together
Joint account	£120,000 per holder (£240,000 for two)
Limited company business account	£120,000 per company
Temporary high balances (house sale, inheritance)	Up to £1.4 million for six months

Unlike Lloyds and NatWest, Starling has no sister brands that share or split the limit. A sole trader's business account counts together with that person's own money, because a sole trader is not a separate legal entity.

Capital and liquidity

Measure (31 March 2026)	Starling Group
CET1 ratioCET1 ratioA bank's highest-quality capital (mainly shares and retained profits) as a share of its risk-weighted assets. Higher means more room to absorb losses.More in the glossary	28.6%
Overall capital requirement	15.0%
UK leverage ratioLeverage ratioA bank's Tier 1 capital divided by its total exposures, without adjusting for risk. It is a simple backstop to risk-based capital rules.More in the glossary	8.9%
Liquidity coverage ratioLiquidity coverage ratioA bank's cash and easy-to-sell assets compared with the money that could flow out in a 30-day crisis. It must be at least 100%.More in the glossary (average)	569%
Net stable funding ratioNet stable funding ratioA bank's stable funding, such as capital and retail deposits, compared with the stable funding its assets need over one year. It must be at least 100%.More in the glossary (average)	247%

Starling's capital is all common equity, £1.12 billion against £3.93 billion of risk-weighted assets. Its Pillar 2A add-on fell to 1.4% of risk-weighted assets in CET1 from 2.9% a year earlier, a sign the PRA sees less bank-specific risk than before. That is far lower than Monzo's 4.1%. Starling said its capital surplus was more than £525 million in May 2026. Its CET1 ratio fell from 31.6% as lending and risk-weighted assets grew.

Starling lends out more of its deposits than Monzo does: £5.2 billion of loans, including buy-to-let mortgages through its subsidiary Fleet Mortgages, against £12.7 billion of deposits. The rest sits mostly in cash at central banks (£4.2 billion) and debt securities (£6.8 billion). Many depositors are small businesses, whose balances can be larger and move faster than personal savings, but the liquidity coverage ratio leaves a very wide margin.

The FCA fine

On 2 October 2024 the FCA fined Starling £28,959,426. When the regulator reviewed challenger banks in 2021, it found serious weaknesses in Starling's anti-money-launderingAnti-money launderingThe rules and checks that stop criminals from moving illegal money through banks, payment firms and crypto exchanges.More in the glossary and sanctions controls, and Starling agreed not to open accounts for high-risk customers until they improved. It then opened more than 54,000 accounts for 49,000 high-risk customers between September 2021 and November 2023.

In January 2023 Starling also found that since 2017 its automated sanctions screening had checked customers against only a fraction of the full list of sanctioned people, and it later reported several potential sanctions breaches. The FCA called the controls "shockingly lax". The case did not touch customer deposits, but it is a more serious finding than Monzo's similar 2025 fine, which is why conduct scores 48 here and 52 at Monzo.

Starling also slipped on the government's Covid loan scheme. In the year to March 2025 it found that a group of Bounce Back Loans made before April 2021 might not have met one of the scheme's guarantee requirements. It told the British Business Bank, voluntarily removed the government guarantee from those loans and booked a £28.2 million provision, about 1.8% of its £1.6 billion of Bounce Back lending. Starling, not taxpayers, carries those losses.

App security and fraud

Starling is an app-only bank with no branches. Customers can freeze cards, block categories of spending and get instant notifications, and in 2026 it launched Scam Intelligence, an AI tool meant to help customers spot scams before they pay. Under UK rules, banks must generally refund victims of authorised push payment scams up to £85,000. We found no major data breach or prolonged outage in Starling's 2026 disclosures, but public outage data for it is thin, so we score digital security at 68, close to Revolut.

Growth and Engine

Starling grew from about 43,000 customers in 2017 to millions today. Its software business, Engine, sells Starling's banking platform to banks in other countries and counted about £70 million of committed annual recurring revenue in 2026. Group revenue fell to £887 million in the year to March 2026 from £940 million, while profit before tax slipped to £217 million from £223 million. Engine is a separate business line and does not change how UK deposits are protected.

How to keep your money safe at Starling

1. Keep no more than £120,000 per person at Starling, or £240,000 in a joint account, and spread larger sums over unconnected banks.
2. If you run a limited company, its deposits have their own limit; as a sole trader they share yours.
3. Use card controls and notifications, and never move money because a caller claims your account is at risk.
4. Keep a card from another bank, such as Barclays, for days when an app is down.

How we scored it

Liquidity (84), deposit protectionDeposit insuranceA government-backed scheme that repays bank customers up to a set limit if their bank fails, such as the FDIC in the US or the FSCS in the UK.More in the glossary (80) and capital (72) are strong for a bank of Starling's size. Conduct (48) reflects the 2024 FCA fine, and stability history (60) a profitable bank that has not yet been tested by a downturn.