Starling Bank Lets Customers Shape Their Own AI Banking Tools With 'Smart Tools' Suite
Starling Bank Lets Customers Shape Their Own AI Banking Tools With ‘Smart Tools’ Suite #
Starling Bank has released a set of artificial intelligence features called “smart tools,” letting customers configure their in-app banking experience through the bank’s existing Starling Assistant. The announcement, made on 20 August 2026, makes Starling among the first UK neobanks to let customers use AI-built banking features and, eventually, propose and deploy their own.
The smart tools work as discrete skills plugged into the Starling Assistant, which already handles voice and text commands for everyday tasks such as moving money, opening savings pots, and reviewing spending. The bank says each tool is built around a specific financial task and can be activated with a single tap, so customers do not need to know how to phrase prompts.
The initial set covers both personal and small business needs. A Tax Saver tool scans transactions for tax-relevant items and automatically shifts a chosen percentage into a separate savings space, ringfencing funds ahead of payment deadlines. A companion tool walks business owners through the requirements of Making Tax Digital, including eligibility checks and registration steps. On the personal side, a student budget planner guides university customers through income sources and typical costs, while a spending quiz prompts users to recall and reflect on where their money has gone. A Rainy Day Saver analyses income, regular outgoings, and direct debits to calculate a personalised savings figure, and a fraud controls module provides scam guidance.
Starling plans to release new smart tools weekly for the rest of 2026, then move to at least a monthly cadence. The bank is also gathering ideas from customers: they can submit smart tool concepts through the assistant, and well-regarded submissions may be made available to the broader customer base.
Harriet Rees, Starling’s Group Chief Information Officer, said the tools are designed to address the gap between customers who use the assistant fluently and those still uncertain about its capabilities. Deputy CIO Frédéric Laurent described the launch as the result of 18 months of customer-facing AI work, adding that the concept was partly inspired by the way the bank’s software engineers use AI-encoded skills to handle repetitive coding tasks, a model the team chose to extend to the customer layer.
Rees said the money-management features Starling introduced a decade ago have since become standard across digital banking, and argued that AI-native tools are the next area where the bank expects to compete.
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