The chief executive of England’s Starling Bank is reportedly departing after just two years.
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That’s according to a report Wednesday (Nov. 4) from the Financial Times (FT), which notes that Raman Bhatia’s exit comes as the FinTech is dealing with flagging growth.
Bhatia has privately told the company’s board that he no longer wants to run Starling, three sources familiar with the matter told the FT. Those sources said Starling’s board has responded by stepping up its succession plans.
Bhatia became CEO after a conflict between the bank’s founder and former chief Anne Boden and Starling investors over the lender’s struggling valuation growth. Boden had founded Starling in 2014 as part of a new wave of challenger banks, though stepped down when the company failed to generate the type of valuation growth as rivals like Revolut, the FT added.
Bhatia joined Starling from energy company Ovo, and had headed the digital bank for HSBC’s retail banking and wealth management operations in the U.K. and Europe.
The FT said that Starling has been dealing with restrictions imposed on it in 2021 by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) due to what the regulator called “shockingly lax” financial-crime controls.
Bhatia said that Starling was in the process of exiting these restrictions when FinTech released full-year results in May, the report added.
Meanwhile, recent PYMNTS Intelligence research finds that neobanks are spending far more on preventing fraud even as their losses from fraud keep climbing.
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