Starling Bank has reported a second consecutive annual profit decline for FY26 (year to 31 March 2026), driven by additional expected-credit-loss provisions on its retail lending book. The primary source of provisioning is the legacy Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS) exposure, where a tranche of loans was found to potentially not comply with guarantee requirements due to historic fraud-check weaknesses, causing Starling to voluntarily remove the government guarantee. This follows FY25's 26% pre-tax profit drop, which was itself impacted by a £29m FCA anti-money-laundering fine and initial BBLS provisioning. CEO Raman Bhatia frames the additional provisioning as a one-off legacy adjustment rather than structural deterioration. Customer growth remains positive with 4.6m accounts and £12.1bn in deposits on the FY25 baseline, but the credit-loss line has dominated headlines. Full FY26 figures including the exact pre-tax profit number have not yet been disclosed.
