Finance Monthly July 2019 Edition

We know that we’re definitely at the beginning of the AI journey and what we really want to do is bringAI into the product so that the whole customer experience can be enhanced by utilising more intelligent decision-making. Ultimately, we want to be able to make experiences better before the customers feel the need for it to happen. What projects are you currently working on with Starling and what’s on the bank’s agenda in regards to financial innovation for the rest of 2019? A lot of this links to the RBS Capability and Innovation fund that we were so fortunate to be awarded. In February this year, we received £100 million that will help us build our SME proposition. In this area, there’s a lot that relates to my world of data science and AI and as part of this, we pledge to integrate the intelligent tools around the product that would offer insights into automation around cash flow forecasting and recommendations for banking solutions to our SME customers. Obviously, within this, we also connect to the idea of technology for good, so we commit to tackling the wider issues around algorithmic bias to ensure that our customers can be equipped with AI recommendations or predictive based analytics, without any inference of bias. Additionally, we’ve also recently launched our new Euro account, so we’ll also be focussed on fully launching and developing that offering for our customers. We’re very excited about where it can take us - watch this space on this one. Are there any changing trends you foresee in the field of FinTech? I think that FinTech will soon start moving away from this operational focus to a more personalised payments service, which is something that we’re only just seeing in other fields, but we don’t really have from banking products yet. I’m hoping that FinTech will soon lead that journey. www.starlingbank.com COVER STORY - STARLING BANK 15 www.finance-monthly.com