Starling Bank has lent out £1.4bn under government schemes
Starling Bank has funded £358m of loans under the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme (CBILS) and just over £1bn in bounce back loans.
The challenger bank released a trading update for the three months to October 2020 that showed it has £1.5bn of lending on its balance sheet, of which £1.4bn is under the government’s emergency loan schemes to support struggling firms during the pandemic.
Starling Bank is accredited to CBILS so it can deliver funds under the scheme itself, but it also previously agreed to fund £300m of CBILS loans through the Funding Circle platform.
The bank revealed in July that it had lent £227.75m through Funding Circle under CBILS so far.
The trading update also showed that Starling Bank posted a profit of £0.8m for the month of October, which represents £10.1m on an annualised basis. Starling Bank expects to be profitable on a monthly basis going forward.
Speaking at a fintech conference last month, Starling Bank’s founder and chief executive Anne Boden said that the bank will “probably” acquire a lending platform within the next year or two, as it seeks to grow its small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) loan originations.
Starling Bank already has a forward flow arrangement with P2P lending platform Zopa, and it has previously expressed interest in pursuing more partnerships with other alternative lenders.
