Starling to recruit 100 staff for Southampton office

Starling Bank is set to recruit 100 new staff for its Southampton office, as part of a hiring drive.

Southampton was the challenger bank's first office outside London and was initially launched in 2019.

The new hires will be based in the city's Town Quay business hub and will work across a variety of different business functions, including customer services, compliance, software engineering, and data analytics.

Anna Griffin, talent acquisition manager at Starling Bank, said the bank is happy to recruit people who haven't worked in banking previously.

"We're really focused on people who just really want to provide the best customer service," she added.

The announcement comes as the challenger has been hiring at a rapid pace.

In July, Starling overtook rival Monzo in terms of its overall headcount, which increased from 1,245 to 1,941 in the year ending March 2022.

In contrast, Monzo's headcount moved from just 1,332 to 1,879 in that same period. 

Much of this hiring is occurring outside the capital; in May, the bank more than doubled its headcount in Cardiff to 868, after initially pledging to hire just 400 people in the region.

Starling's expanding headcount mirrors an expanded lending portfolio.

The bank posted a pre-tax profit of £32.1m on revenues of £188m in its most recent financial year, a marked reversal from a pre-tax loss of £31.5m the previous year.

Starling CEO Anne Boden attributed the transition to profitability in large part to its expanded mortgage lending portfolio.

Mortgages accounted for £1.2bn of Starling's loan book as of March 2022, but that figure grew to over £2bn in June.

Despite the majority of financial services jobs still being concentrated near London, Starling isn't the only major employer boosting its headcount outside the capital.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is set to open a new office in Leeds, creating up to 100 new jobs.

In addition, Bank of London is set to create 232 jobs in Northern Ireland with the opening of its new Belfast office, across job functions such as software engineering, compliance, and risk.