What's up you guys, sasha here, starting bank is fast becoming one of the most popular banks in the uk, along with monzo. They have pulled over millions of customers from high street banks over the last few years, and i am one of those people. I have a few different accounts with starting bank and i really like some of the things they're doing. I also found a few things that i don't like i'm going to mention some of those in this review as well.

I last did review in 2020 very early on in this channel's life. I told you everything i liked and didn't like about the bank then, but a lot has changed. They have improved a bunch of stuff. New things have been released.

There's a lot of different things happening in the market and also, hopefully i'll be able to condense this into a somewhat shorter review this time. So here goes: let's do the starling bank review 2021.. The bank was formed in 2014 and was one of the very early entrants to the market out of the new wave of challenger banks and fintechs. In fact, it was so early that a certain tom blomfield was working at styling bank some time before he went on to start monzo himself.

He was so proud of his time that he managed to delete that entire entry from his linkedin profile, but we're not going to get into the depths of that. In recent months, styling bank has grown considerably. They are frequently at the top of the current account switching scheme tables and they have attracted 1.25 million retail customers as of july 2020 and that's in addition to business accounts, euro accounts and a bunch of other types of accounts that they also have. Unlike pretty much every other challenger bank and fintech that competes with starlink, they haven't actually got a paid version of their account.

Their bank account is completely free to join. To get 100 of the features you don't have to make any minimum deposits, you don't have to set up any direct debits in order to access the free. It is just free to go and set up and begin using right away and in addition to having a completely free personal account, you can also go and get a completely free joint account as well. This is a business card, but let me cover some of the other accounts that you can also have with styling.

You can also have euro accounts, so you can have a secondary account that is denominated in euros completely for free if you frequently go and send or receive money in euros, and you don't want to always be exchanging and potentially losing value on the exchange rate, it Is free except the fact that you have to pay 0.5 percent interest to the bank rather than receiving it from the bank for any amount over 50 000 euros? That's due to negative interest rates in the eurozone. I suspect this probably won't impact very many people at all, there's also teen accounts. These are restricted to 16 to 17 year olds, essentially, there's just a few things that are available in the normal account that you can't have, if you're under 18 and as a result, those have been removed, but in large respects it is basically pretty much exactly the Same there's also a styling kite for those under 16. All the way down to age.

Six, there's really useful features for parents to be able to deposit money into it, manage the accounts and restrict where that money is spent. It costs two pounds a month to have one of these accounts. There's other accounts that you can go and pay two pounds a month in addition to that as well, you can get additional bank accounts if you want to have more than one for whatever reason: uh, you can have additional cards with a separate bank account number and Separate everything for another two pound a month and the last one you can have is connected cards for two pounds a month. You can have a separate card that lives within your spaces.

I'm gon na get to all of that in just a second, where you can give it to somebody else who can go and buy things in your behalf. For example, if somebody is caring for you or something like that, you can have this additional card that you can load up to 200 pounds onto give it somebody else and they can go and spend it in shops. On your behalf now let me cover the key account features all the basics that you would expect from any bank account are here, you can go and spend money, you can go and pay into the account. You can go and do basic analysis of your transactions.

You can get statements all of those kind of things they work just like you would expect, unlike some of the alternatives to this styling bank, have an app on whichever device that you prefer, but they also have a desktop version as of a few months ago, which Is really really handy, the desktop version doesn't do everything that the app does, but if you want to go and look at some of the transactions or go and double check things or whatever it is that you want to do, you can do them on desktop as Well, although stanley bank is a mobile first bank, although they are purely online and they don't have any branches, they have built-in features and functionality to make your life easier, even though they don't have that big network, you can go and deposit cash at any post office Branch and their limits are very generous. You can deposit up to 20 000 pounds per year in cash, which is considerably better than what companies like monzo or other ones are offering best of all cash deposits are completely free, as are check deposits and with checks. Not only can you go and send them to sterling to be deposited for free within a few days, but you can also take a picture of a check if it is under 500 pounds and that will be attributed to your account much more quickly as well, which Is really really handy for the small checks that you got given by your grandma christmas or whatever they can be in your account very very quickly. Styling is completely free to use abroad, whether you go and spend on your card, whether you even withdraw cash from a cash machine, it will cost you nothing.

You're gon na use the mastercard exchange rate on the day to go and convert the money that you're drawing or spending to uk, and actually that is a really really good exchange rate. There's absolutely no interest, no fees, no any kind of charges by sterling, which is incredible, and the limits are not there like they are with some alternatives as well. So if you like traveling - and you want to have a card, this is definitely a great option. Moreover, from your account, you can actually go and send money abroad in case you need to go and pay somebody for whatever service or goods that you're buying from somewhere, and they prefer bank can transfers pay for a driving traffic offense in italy or any other reason That you might have in your life, you can go and send money abroad, and it is really quite simple: it isn't quite as good or cheap as some of the alternative options, and i have an entire video.

Where i talk about this, i'm going to link that in the description below, but it is really good. If you don't want the hassle, if you don't want to go and set up a whole separate account, it costs just 0.4 plus a few pence in some cases, and it is pretty handy. If you have the account you can go and withdraw cash from your bank. Account, i know the notion seems really obvious to anyone who doesn't have a challenger bank account, but some new fintechs and challenger banks are restricting considerably how much you can go and withdraw from cash machines with standing bank.

That restriction is really not there. You can drop to 300 pounds a day. There are absolutely no overall limits, and all of that is completely for free. The one thing to remember is that standing bank is not part of the link network, and that means that in some very unusual rare cases, if the machine that you're looking at says link on it but does not have a mastercard logo, you won't be able to Go and use that cash machine, but that is really quite rare.

There are other restrictions that you need to be aware of, but they're not unusual. You can go and spend up to 10 000 pounds per day maximum on your debit card or send up to 25 000 pounds from your account per day. If you want to go make a larger transaction than that, let's say: you're buying a car or making a deposit on your house purchase. You can do it, but it is quite cumbersome.

You have to go and contact customer service. They will pass your query onto some internal department once they've approved it. They will then give you a one day window in which you can go and send that money, so you will need to do it at least one day in advance. So when you want to do it and it's quite a manual weird process, but it can be done and although it is a bit frustrating you're, probably not going to be doing too many of these transactions too often.

So i don't think that's much of a deal. Next up is card controls. They are incredible. I think this is a really really useful feature.

Whether you want to just stop yourself from doing particular activities, whether you want to go and protect against fraud or any other reason, you can go and block any kinds of transactions or enable them manually by just sliding a few sliders. For example, you can manually control online transactions or gambling transactions or atm withdrawals or pretty much anything else now really quickly. Let's talk about borrowing, they do talk quite a lot about it on their website, but the truth is they don't do very much with. I have a pretty decent credit record.

I have lots and lots of credit cards and other products, so they're frequently changed and always get accepted. I never had any kind of issues, but i am not eligible for that overdraft facility. It says that i might become eligible starting tomorrow, but, given that i have a pretty good credit position, i'm guessing a lot of people just won't have the overdraft facility open to them now. The pricing on overdraft is really quite interesting if you do get accepted.

If you do get them, the pricing is 15, 25 or 35, depending on your level of risk, which is quite interesting because it just happens to be exactly four percent less than exactly the same tiers. That monster introduced just seven days earlier in december 2019, but that's probably just a complete coincidence. You can also borrow money through loans. The apr is 11.5, but you can only borrow up to 5 000 pounds and again i don't think many people even have that option available.

You can't go and just apply for a loan. You have to be first selected by styling to be eligible, and i'm guessing that you have to have styling, as your primary bank account with all your direct debits and your salary going into it before that happens, because i don't have it even though i use it Quite a bit, but not maybe enough, and what will happen is they will notify you and you will have another option somewhere within your spaces area where you can go and get a loan that way. But until you do, you can't even go and ask them if you're eligible, they will come and find you when they think that you want to have a loan. Therefore, another feature which pays 0.95 interest on amounts of up to 85 000 pounds in your bank account which kind of sounds good-ish.

I guess, but i don't really understand the point. It is so low that it's not really going to be of any material consequence to anyone. If you held 1 000 pounds in that account for an entire year, you would earn a grand sum of 50p, so i don't really see what the value is. If you want to save money, there are much better options out there.

You can invest money for even more money talking about that. They don't do investments, unlike some of their competition. They don't have an investment feature within the app which i think is great. I think that is actually a really good thing, because in my mind, banking and bank accounts and related products are completely separate from investments, and i really dislike it.

When people begin blurring those lines and trying to make it feel like the two are kind of like the same, so i quite like the fact that they stick to what they know best. I like the fact that they stick to banking products to making those work as well as possible, because there are already other companies out there that do investments really really well and probably better than stalin would be able to do if they did it themselves, because revolut Have begun doing investments and their offering is really lagging miles behind what some of these other guys are doing. For example, i use trading 212 to do my trading. They offer huge amounts of features.

They offer 10 000 stocks in etfs. It is completely free 100 free to use for regular investors like myself, and you also get a free share by the way. If you do want that free share, you can go and click the link in the description below and if you go and set up your account and deposit, just one pound minimum or whatever it is that you want to invest, you can go and get a free Share worth up to 100 pounds now the thing i really like about sterling is: they also have a referral program and that referral program plans a tree for every single person that gets referred through somebody else to starting bank. So if you do want to go and check starting bank out make sure you go and use that link so that we can all have that extra tree now.

One feature that starting have been building on recently is called spaces. It is sort of their version of monzo's pots, but it is quite different and let me tell you why, first of all on the actual savings kind of end or having a separate pot of money in your account - and it is really basic - it doesn't really do Very much at all, you can go and create one. You can go and set up a photo. You can go and deposit money into it.

You can go, withdraw money from it, but it doesn't really do anything by itself. You can't go and make payments from that pot by setting up direct debits. You can't contribute transactions to it. You can't really do anything.

It's just a sort of separate little bit where your money can sit for a while until you need it again. If you need to use it, you have to move it back to your account and then use it. You can't really do anything with the actual space. Having said that, i have heard some rumors that they are working on something that will rival the monzo pots feature in essentially allowing you to go and distribute your money automatically from incoming payments into these types of spaces.

They'll allow transactions to be made directly from those spaces and then you'll be able to manage your money much more effectively and understand how much money you have left for the month and all of those kind of good things. And i have heard that this might be coming quite soon, but i don't know i probably am just making it up, and i am just some random guy on the internet, so we shall find out if that actually happens on accounts that i think the spaces can Be considerably bigger than just the pots feature and starting bank have certainly begun working on making it a much bigger thing. For example, if you go into spaces, you can see that it's not just designed for that particular purpose. It's designed for any separate space that you can have your money sitting.

That is not a separate account but sort of a separate part of your account. So the two things that they currently have are the child cards and the connected cards. Both of those types of cards are not separate. Bank accounts, they're just separate spaces, and they work really really well.

You can go move money from your main bank account to that particular space and whether it's somebody who has one of your connected cards or a child that you've given a card to they can have a card that is only linked to that space and they can Spend money only from that space you can go and control it. You can look at the transactions and manage special restrictions and other things like that for each of those spaces, if they begin doing features that are somewhat similar as what you can do for those types of things to the other types of spaces. This can be a really amazing proposition now really quickly. Let's talk about using the card and the app and i'm gon na start with the app, because i am just not a really big fan of the design.

I know a lot of people disagree and i know a lot of people every time i make a video about starting bank tell me that they feel the opposite, but i still feel there is just something missing: the menu is a little bit on the cumbersome side. I personally sometimes take a minute or two minutes to go and find something within the app that i know i've seen before, but i'm not quite sure where it is. I don't like the fact that there are multiple different places where certain features can be found. For example, the bank account can be found in at least three different places within the menu system, which i think is a bit of a waste because it just adds pointless extra places where you can click to the same thing.

And i think that hasn't thought out. That tree of the menu system enough and some other bits are really well hidden. For example, they have just released a brand new version of their navigation and their app look, but that is not enabled by default. Even if you have the most latest app, you don't actually have that enabled and you can have to go and find it in the menu in order to enable the app to show you this most recent layout to enable the new layout that they are working on.

And they are consistently improving, you have to go and click the top right hand. Button then click the faint settings in the top right, not one of the actual menu options and then you'll see the option to click on the new navigational menu and then enable it. This probably will change in the next few days or in the next few weeks, because every time i point out one of these very awkward and very weird ways that something works for some reason. It then changes really really quickly and i get a load of comments saying but sasha it doesn't do that anymore.

It doesn't do it. Your video is wrong, so so, if it isn't doing that, they've probably changed it. Since this video was recorded, the main screen when you first open the app is very clear. It is very clean, but it doesn't do very much.

You have to go and click around to go and find anything. You have to actually go and look at the various different menu options. The screen itself doesn't have much function or features. You can go and look at your spending.

You can go and look at the categories of what you've been spending some of the recent transactions and some of these things. They are good, but i still feel they can make them that much better in trying to understand exactly where your spending is going. If they want to go, and just literally look at what monzo is doing with their features for showing you those wheels of exactly where your different spend is going, that's probably a really good place to start. One important feature for anyone who wants to go and set up a joint account is that several really critical account features that are available for the main account are not available for the joint account.

For example, you can't go and split transactions on a joint account, so if you go out somewhere say with some friends whenever you can go out and pay with your join account card, you can't then split that transaction, even though you can with the regular one. You can't go and get an overdraft on the joint account, even though you cannot pretty much any other bank and there probably are other features that are also disabled, that i just haven't been able to find. Yet. But anyway, let's move on stanley bank have regularly talked about their marketplace.

The marketplace is the place where you can go and get additional services from their trusted providers and partners, and it sounds kind of nice. It sounds like they're looking out for you and giving you more options and more cool features that are integrated with starting bank. But the truth is it's just a marketing play. It doesn't really integrate any better than many other apps do with starting as well.

Every time you click on one of those links, whether you're setting up a new pension account or doing investing or anything else, starting basically get a commission paid by that other company for the fact that they sent you their way and that's it. That's the pretty much. The end of the relationship - yes, you can go and set up their debits from starting back to that thing. Yes, there is minimal integration, but no better than with pretty much any other bank out there.

So i feel this is somewhat disingenuous and i have the business account we're starting as well, and that business account has some features within this marketplace that are really really useful. They are integrated with a lot of accounting services and other tools that i personally use and their integration. There is actually fundamentally better than the integrations of other banks. They actually have built something that works better and there is a real benefit to having styling bank over others, and i'm really hoping that.

Maybe in some time some of these consumer features will have the same benefits as well, rather than just being something that starting makes. A small amount of money from now. Let's really quickly talk about the future of standing bank and safety. There were rumors circled just a few weeks ago that lloyds and jp morgan from the us are both interested in purchasing starlink bank.

This was shared across all the mainstream media, but very soon after ann bowdan came out and said that she is in no way interested in sending the bank either to any existing offers. Any past offers or any offers that might come in the future. She says that she wants to go and take the bank to an ipo at some point in 2022 and the reason that her word is really important is that her and harry mcpike, who is the major shareholder in the bank own the vast majority of the bank, Between them, too, financially, the bank is doing all right. They actually have some revenue streams and, although those revenue streams aren't very big, they are making money.

They have publicly made a big announcement recently that they are profitable, which is technically true, but it really isn't, because the vast majority of the money that they are attributing to their is actually coming from the government paying them interest for loans that they've given to businesses. For business interruption through last year, it isn't real revenue, because the businesses themselves haven't actually begun paying any of it. It isn't real sustainable revenue, because that level of lending and that level of risk, which is entirely covered by the government, is not going to continue for years and years in the future. So this is probably a not best way of understanding whether stunning bank is actually good for money.

But in my personal opinion i wouldn't be particularly worried because they are a fully regulated bank there's a huge number of things that they have to comply with and the way your money is stored and the way that the accounts are set up in the way that The money is protected and any funds that you have up to 85 000 pounds is protected by the financial compensation scheme, and that is really important, because if the worst thing happened, which i think is highly highly improbable and the bank for some reason went under you - Would still be able to go and access that money, because the government would pay it out to you instead, all in all, i think stalin bank is the best challenger bank out there. In fact, i would go as far as to say they are. The best bank account in the uk, as i concluded in a recent roundup of the best bank accounts that i'm going to link in the description below as well. If you agree or disagree, make sure you go and leave a comment below and smash the like button.

Future algorithm, if you haven't already thank you so much for watching and i'll see you guys later.