Starling Bank looking to raise up to £35m with two new BCR grants

If successful, the grants could take Starling’s total funding raised this year to up to £135m.

Starling Bank has raised £100m so far this year but is already on the hunt for up to £35m according to Yahoo Finance. 

The digital bank is in the process of applying to two grants from a new round of funding from the Banking Competition Remedies (BCR). 

Starling can only receive funding from one of the two grants it has applied to, which are worth £35m and £25m respectively, and say the funding will be used to build on Starling’s already strong SME offering. 

Anne Boden, CEO and founder of Starling Bank, told Yahoo Finance: “We are doing well and therefore we believe it’s in the interest of competition in the UK for us to be given an additional grant of £35m in order for us to be competitive in new sectors of SMEs.” 

“We have over delivered on everything that we’ve promised and we feel as if that next stage for us now is to put ourselves under the next level of scrutiny,” she added. 

Starling received £100m from the RBS competition fund last year and, according to an update from the bank at the end of May, has dished it out to customers. 

The challenger bank still looks to be on track to lend out all of its £913m SME lending target for 2020, unlike fellow recipients of BRC grants NatWest and Metro Bank who have had to hand back £100m after admitting they both wouldn’t be able to meet their commitments.