Traditional high street banks replicating digital challenger features should be seen as a positive development because it ultimately improves the customer experience across the industry, according to Raghu Narula, chief customer and banking officer at Starling Bank.
Speaking at MoneyLIVE Summit, Narula said that while many of the features pioneered by digital banks are now being adopted more widely, the trend is helping to raise standards for customers rather than dilute the challengers’ advantage.
“Anything that increases the customer experience and the ability for us to serve customers better, and that pulls the industry to another level which has now become the norm, we think that’s good practice,” he said.
Digital banking tools such as budgeting features – including Starling’s “Spaces” – have increasingly been introduced by traditional banks in recent years. However, Narula argued that the copying of these features should not be viewed negatively.
“The fact that our features like Spaces did get copied is good for all customers,” he said. “That starts to raise the bar for everyone.”
According to Narula, improving the overall customer experience across the banking sector aligns with Starling’s broader goal of pushing the industry forward, rather than simply competing on individual product features.
“We want to continue to lead that movement for the industry, not just for digital or challenger banks,” he said.
However, Narula added that delivering a strong customer experience goes beyond app design or user interface. The underlying technology used by banks also plays a critical role.
Many established banks still rely on legacy systems, which can slow down innovation and make it harder to introduce new services quickly.
“Quite often, outdated technology in the back-end systems comes in the way of innovation,” he said.
By contrast, Starling was built on a cloud-native infrastructure, which Narula said enables the bank to innovate more rapidly and deliver improvements to customers more efficiently.
The bank is now also offering that technology externally, exporting its platform as a software-as-a-service solution to other financial institutions.
Starling is currently supporting banks across Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Romania using its technology platform, Narula said.
He added that using modern infrastructure to help other banks improve their services reflects Starling’s broader aim of raising customer experience standards across the global banking industry.