Britain’s Starling Bank is scheduled to announce Monday (March 8, 2021) that it has raised about $373 million from investors led by Fidelity Management & Research, Sky News reported.
Starling launched in 2016, two year after it was founded, with iOS and Android apps, its website states, and began to offer Britain’s first digital bank account for businesses in 2018.
The latest round of investing maintains Starling’s valuation at well more than $1 billion, Sky News reported, adding that other investors in the new round include Qatar Investment Authority, Railpen, and hedge fund Millennium Management.
Sky News quoted unidentified sources as having said Starling’s leadership wants to use the new capital to expand the bank beyond the British Isles into Continental Europe.
In an August 2020 “CEO’s letter,” Starling founder Anne Boden wrote that the bank was eyeing an expansion into Ireland “to enable our expansion there and to act as a springboard to our wider European expansion, starting in the Netherlands, France and Germany. Our Irish discussions were temporarily put on ice during lockdown, but are now being kickstarted again. We now expect to start our international expansion in 2021.”
A Starling spokesman declined comment on the new funding report, Sky News reported.
In November 2020, TechCrunch quoted Boden as having said she was eyeing taking the bank public.
The bank says it drew its name from the starling’s reputation for being “sociable, adaptable, friendly and supportive – all qualities we wanted from our new bank.”
Boden is a veteran of the U.K. banking sector, having worked prior to founding Starling at Lloyds, RBS and Standard Chartered, according to published reports.
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