Starling Bank
Acquisitions
3
Major Deals Covered
This page covers 3 major deals from 2021 to 2025, each with its price where disclosed and the reason behind it.
| Company | Year | Price | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fleet Mortgages | 2021 | Undisclosed | Bought specialist buy-to-let mortgage lender Fleet Mortgages to put customer deposits to work in secured property lending. |
| Ember | 2025 | Undisclosed | Acquired all-in-one accounting and tax platform Ember to deepen its SME offering. |
| Masthaven Mortgage Portfolio | 2022 | Undisclosed | Purchased a £500 million mortgage portfolio. |
2025
Acquired all-in-one accounting and tax platform Ember to deepen its SME offering.
Within six months Starling launched an HMRC-recognised Making Tax Digital service for sole traders and landlords.
Integrated into Starling's business banking proposition.
2022
Purchased a £500 million mortgage portfolio.
2021
Bought specialist buy-to-let mortgage lender Fleet Mortgages to put customer deposits to work in secured property lending.
Gave Starling broker-led mortgage origination, a major part of its loan book.
Fleet remains Starling's main mortgage lending channel.
Starling is growing through software sales and lending rather than by opening consumer banks in new countries, which is expensive and heavily regulated. It sells its Engine platform to existing banks, including in Asia and the Middle East, and it is expanding mortgage and commercial lending in the UK, funded by its deposit base of about $16.8 billion (GBP 12.7 billion).
Starling earns money in three ways. Retail banking offers free personal current accounts, which bring in customers and deposits. Business banking serves British small and medium-sized businesses and is its main source of profit. Engine by Starling licenses the cloud banking software Starling built for itself to other banks as a service, and it had about $92.4 million (GBP 70 million) of committed annual recurring revenue.
In July 2021, Starling Bank announced its first major corporate acquisition, purchasing Hampshire-based specialist buy-to-let mortgage lender Fleet Mortgages for £50 million in cash and stock. Fleet originated specialized residential mortgages for professional property landlords through independent mortgage brokers.
Following the pandemic, Starling held billions of pounds in low-cost customer deposits earning near-zero returns. Acquiring Fleet Mortgages gave Starling an immediate, proven lending pipeline to deploy surplus deposits into high-yielding, secured property mortgages, generating hundreds of millions in net interest income.
Since being acquired, Fleet Mortgages has originated billions of pounds in new buy-to-let mortgages for Starling's balance sheet, contributing over £2.0 billion to £2.5 billion in pristine, collateralized assets.
In 2022, Starling acquired a £500 million residential mortgage portfolio from Masthaven Bank as the specialist lender exited the UK market, accelerating Starling's mortgage asset scale without incurring high origination marketing expenses.
Yes. In late 2021 and early 2022, Starling participated in a competitive bidding process to acquire specialist lender Kensington Mortgages (with an asset book exceeding £1.2 billion). Starling ultimately withdrew from the auction due to disciplined valuation limits, and Kensington was acquired by Barclays.
Starling adheres to strict M&A criteria: targets must provide immediate balance sheet lending scale, carry high-quality secured underwriting track records, integrate cleanly into Starling's Treasury operations, and be immediately accretive to return on equity (ROE).
Unlike traditional banks that acquire software vendors to modernize, Starling built its core banking platform, mobile app, and API architecture entirely in-house. It avoids acquiring legacy software firms to prevent accumulating technical debt.
The transaction required formal change-in-control approvals from the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), verifying Starling's capital adequacy and risk management governance.
Yes. Fleet Mortgages continues to operate under its existing brand identity and executive management team in Fleet, Hampshire, while utilizing Starling's Treasury balance sheet for mortgage funding.
While digital peers like Nutmeg and Moneybox were acquired by JP Morgan and others, Starling has chosen to integrate wealth and pension providers through its Marketplace open banking API rather than acquiring balance sheet-heavy asset managers.
The acquisition of Fleet Mortgages was the catalyst that accelerated Starling's profitability: it converted low-cost, idle business deposits into high-margin secured lending income, decoupling Starling from reliance on debit card interchange fees.
Starling remains opportunistic, selectively evaluating specialty lending books and niche business finance platforms in the UK, while focusing primarily on organic growth and international Engine SaaS licensing.
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