Why brokers should be paying attention
For mortgage professionals, Starling is not simply a neobank that competes for current account customers. In July 2021, Starling acquired specialist buy-to-let mortgage lender Fleet Mortgages for £50 million, which had around £1.75 billion of mortgages under management at the time. Fleet has since grown significantly and remains one of the more active buy-to-let lenders in the specialist market. The direction Starling takes operationally – and how it uses AI to reshape its internal processes – has direct implications for that lending operation and the brokers who place business with it.
Starling has also historically offered mortgage-related services through its marketplace — it partnered with digital broker Habito from 2018, giving customers in-app access to mortgage advice. Habito has since been acquired by Monzo (December 2025), ending that arrangement, but the Fleet Mortgages acquisition remains Starling’s primary foothold in the mortgage market.
Starling has 6.2 million customers, mostly in the UK, and employs more than 4,000 people. The 130 roles represent roughly 3% of the total workforce – a significant restructuring by any measure, but not a crisis signal for a bank that has now delivered five consecutive years of profitability, a record among UK challenger banks.
The rate squeeze hitting the whole sector
Starling’s revenue pressure is not unique to it. The business model shared by most UK neobanks – parking large customer deposits at the Bank of England and collecting interest – worked exceptionally well when rates were at 5.25%. As the BoE has cut rates, that income has eroded. Many neobanks generate the majority of their revenues by parking customer deposits at the Bank of England rather than lending out those deposits.
Morgan McKinley’s labour market report, published in May 2026, forecast that neobanks including Monzo and Starling were expected to scale back recruitment growth in 2026, with Starling having already recorded a 24% decline in job vacancies in the period before today’s announcement. Today’s cuts confirm that prediction has landed.