Starling Bank is applying for two new BCR worth up to £35m from an EU-backed competition fund that has already awarded it with £100m.
If the application would be successful, the grants could make Starling’s total funding raised during 2020 to up to £135m.
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The challenger bank will use the fresh funds over the course of four years to create new products for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Starling Bank CEO Anne Boden said to this: “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’ve managed to build a very successful, high-growth SME business, we now have something like 3% of market share and we are a safe pair of hands to be honest,” Anne Boden added.
Other fintechs applying for grants include Tide and Clearbank, Trade Ledger and Equifax, and Funding Xchange. Applications for these grants were opened and an announcement is expected in September.
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At this moment, Starling has more than 1.4 million active accounts, including 155,000 business accounts. The deposit base has doubled in the last six months and it now holds more than £2.4 billion in deposits.
