Starling reported a pre-tax profit of £32.1 million for the financial year ending 31 March 2022.
Read also: Highlights of Monzo’s 2022 annual report
This means a major difference to the pre-tax loss of £31.5 million for the period to 31 March 2021. Revenue for the same period to 31 March 2022 was £188 million.
Starling Bank founder and chief executive Anne Boden writes in the bank’s annual report: “In 2021 we focused on diversifying our asset base into new asset classes in order to bolster our resilience and bring in new revenue. This included the acquisition in July 2021 of Fleet Mortgages, a specialist buy-to-let mortgage lender.”
Starling continued to build on the mortgage capability it gained through Fleet, with more than £2bn of mortgages now on the balance sheet as of June 2022.
This growth in lending has been funded by the company’s growing deposit base, which increased by a further £600m in the three months to the end of June 2022.
“This type of lending now accounts for the majority of our loan book and in the current financial year, the government-backed BBLS and CBILS schemes represent around 44%. This proportion will shrink further as we continue to diversify our lending portfolio.
“I’ve made no secret of our M&A ambitions and you can expect targeted acquisitions in the lending space to play a key role in the year ahead, but only at the right price and in the right market conditions.”
Another important piece of data showed that although Monzo and Starling have continued to hire and grow their headcounts, Starling has narrowed and now overtaken the challenger bank rival by the sheer number of staff.
In the year to March 2022, Starling has increased its headcount from 1,245 to 1,941, while at Monzo, hiring wasn’t quite able to keep up. Its 2021 lead of 1,332 staff grew slower than Starling, ending the year with a headcount of 1,879.
Starling’s annual report also shows that the highest-paid director of the bank, assumed to be Boden, got another 50 percent pay rise in 2022, taking home £1.02m in base salary, up from £681,000 in 2021.
