Britain’s first digital bank grew exponentially fast in five years, with 43,000 customers ballooning to more than 3.6 million by 2023. Starling Bank’s financial crime program, however, did not keep pace with its growth, according to the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). In 2021, the regulator found serious deficiencies in the bank’s financial crime prevention system and ordered it to stop onboarding high-risk customers until improvements were made.
But Starling failed to comply with that order, opening 54,000 accounts for 49,000 customers at high risk of having financial sanctions from 2021-23. Over the same period, Starling reported multiple breaches of financial sanctions to the relevant authorities.
