This year’s Abu Dhabi Finance Week 2024 (ADFW) attracted over 20,000 leaders and experts from global financial institutions across four days. During the event, The Fintech Times caught up with Sam Everington, CEO of Engine by Starling.
Engine by Starling is behind the platform that powers Starling Bank, the UK’s digital challenger bank, and the company is now looking to take this technology and offer it to other banking partners to help deliver digitally native experiences elsewhere.
Sam Everington, CEO of Engine by Starling
“We’re taking the technology we originally developed for Starling Bank in the UK to deliver rich, personalised, digital, native experiences that put it at the top of the customer satisfaction tables in the UK, and partnering with other banks and markets to deliver the same rich experiences and the same transformational operating experience,” Everington explained.
“It’s actually the back office management portal, as we call it, that gets really banks excited. Lots of them have been developing and investing in their apps and other channels, but they’ve got really complex scenes in the back – lots of different systems, running engines, with a single pane of glass across retail business and all the products.”
European success
These efforts are well underway for Engine, which shared two major successes from this year. The first is with Salt Bank, a Romanian bank based in Bucharest.
“We put Salt Bank live, which is owned by Bank of Transylvania, the largest banking group in Southeast Europe. They launched in April and it took under 12 months to integrate, develop their apps, build the local market integrations and ensure compliance to get a rich proposition into market.
“They have around 18 or 19 different currencies as well. It’s arguably richer than Starling’s proposition. Having only launched in April, they’ve already got 300,000 customers on the platform, which is absolutely fantastic.”
Everington also highlighted its work alongside AMP Bank in Australia: “AMP is almost the opposite end of the spectrum, because it’s a 175-year-old institution, which is primarily a pensions and wealth advice business that runs a bank that offers savings and mortgages.
“They’ve partnered with us to bring, originally a small business transaction account offering to market, but also their new retail customers. We started implementing in October last year and went live in October this year – so, again, under 12 months to integrate into the existing systems, the consolidated ledger and regulatory reporting of the group, as well as the Australian domestic market, all the payment rails, onboarding systems and ID databases. That will launch in the public market in Q1 of next year.”
Opportunities in the GCC
While in the UAE, Everington also discussed Engine’s regional focus. “We’re very much GCC-focused at this point. There’s interest from other markets as well, but it’s the GCC is a particularly interesting market for us because there’s such a high level of digital adoption and digital acceptance, but the banks haven’t necessarily caught up yet. There are some good digital propositions here, but I don’t think there’s anything that’s competitive to where Starling is now.
“European banks are fundamentally risk averse, and they often lack the capital to deliver the investment. They still have the ambition, but the ability to deliver is more limited. It’s going to take a bit longer to deliver transformation there.
“This region’s has the ambition, but it also has the ability to deliver. There’s a real culture of getting things done and getting things done quickly, and that’s very appealing for us. We like that. I think the proposition will resonate really well in the region.”
Supporting the small business economy
Engine by Starling has also recognised the opportunity to serve established banks in the region, and help them expand into new markets, says Everington. As banks look to build propositions in new regions or countries, Engine’s technology could prove a significant accelerator.
“Small business banking is very underserved here, because the small business economy is really developing. There are around half a million small businesses in the UAE at the moment, predicted to grow to a million in the next five or so years,” he explained.
As banks look to capitalise on this area with new products, Engine’s proposition also aims to help bring them to market more quickly.
“This presents a huge opportunity for us because when you set up a business, one of the first things you do is open a new bank account. It’s an acquisition channel for banks in any market, the new businesses are a real economic priority for the GCC governments and the banks generally don’t have a competitive option there – then they look at Starling. It has amassed a nine per cent market share in five years, half a million business customers, and is getting close to being the fifth biggest business bank in Britain already. The proposition works for that smaller micro business end, and we could deliver it very quickly to banks in the region.”
The post Engine by Starling Reveals GCC Ambitions and Highlights European Successes in 2024 appeared first on The Fintech Times.
